Free Mary Emma & Company by Ralph Moody Page A

expect he’d want all outdoors for it, why?”
    â€œWell,” I said, “you know we rented the big house next to the fire station, beginning the first of the month, and we haven’t any furniture for it, and . . .”
    â€œWell, bless my soul, if I ain’t gettin’ simpler minded by the year! ’Course you need furniture! Now what was the matter with my head that I didn’t think about it? And there ain’t no reason Dickie Maddox couldn’t sell the old lady’s stuff for most anything he was offered. Let me see . . . let me see. Funeral’s goin’ to be up to the Baptist Church at ten o’clock, ain’t it? If things was so I could get away from the store tomorrow mornin’ . . .”
    â€œI could take care of the store for you,” I told him. “Mother will always write me a note if I have to stay out of school for something important.”
    â€œHmmmm, hmmmm. Don’t doubt me you could do it for a couple of hours in a pinch; how many beans in a quart?”
    â€œA pound and fourteen ounces,” I told him.
    â€œHow much is kerosene?”
    â€œFourteen cents a gallon, but eight cents for half a gallon,” I said.
    â€œWell, well, well. Learnin’ fast, ain’t you? Best to get on with washin’ them windows; time’s a-flyin’. Just might happen I’ll take in old Grandma Maddox’s funeral—ain’t seen or heard tell of Dickie in more’n twenty-five years—don’t have a notion he’d remember me noways. I’ll think ’bout it endurin’ the day and leave you know before you go home tonight.”
    I think Mr. Haushalter wanted to talk to Mr. Durant before he said it would be all right for me to tend store while he went to Mrs. Maddox’s funeral, but just before we locked up that night he told me, “If your ma’s agreeable to you stayin’ out of school in the forenoon tomorrow, I don’t know but what I’d take in old Grandma Maddox’s funeral. ’Course I’d come down and get you started off in good shape before I went, and haply I wouldn’t go out to the buryin’ grounds at all; that way I’d prob’ly be back well afore noontime.”
    I told him I’d tell Mother, and that I was sure she’d say it would be all right. Then, when I was nearly up to Uebel’s drug store, he called me back and told me, “Now don’t say nothin’ ’bout the old lady’s furniture; a man’s in bad business when he counts his chickens afore he’s put the hen a-settin’.”
    I was waiting outside the store door when Mr. Haushalter got there the next morning. He was a few minutes late, but he was all dressed up in a blue serge suit and a white shirt, and he had his shoes shined till they sparkled in the light from the street lamp. The suit was one I think he must have had for a long, long time; the lapels of the coat were wide but no longer than my hand, it buttoned right up to the knot of his tie, and it was tight enough around the middle that there were scallops between the buttons. After he’d unlocked the doors and the cash drawer under the counter, he only fed Matilda and looked at her kittens. Then he kept away from things that might get his suit dirty and told me how to get the fire going good, and things I’d need to know while he was away.
    I think Mr. Haushalter and I were both kind of anxious for the funeral time to come. He kept walking up and down the length of the store, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself, and I wanted to have as much time as I could to run the store alone before Mr. Durant would get in with his morning orders. On just about every other trip Mr. Haushalter made up and down the floor, he’d think of something else he should have told me.
    Of course, I don’t remember them all, but one time he stopped and told me, “Now