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Show page 164 face, to Annie, was shiny and glorious. "He's going to live with me," she said. "Oh, I ' l l t r y to make him happy. He can help me watch the melons." In the alley behind the Shelton house adjacent to Annie's, Johnny Hawkins and Zack Shumack crept away from a wire fence, leaving the melons to a l a t e r hour, accosting Holder and calling him boss long before his time. "You gonna l i v e with Moonshine Annie, Boss? You gonna live in that house?" They made t h e i r words a fearful condemnation. They were each twelve years old, from homes near our turpentine s t i l l s, completely without social compassion. They pointed toward Annie in the window, seemingly poking t h e i r fingers into her eyesockets, pushing her farther back into her burdensome past. They were cruel; they danced and mimicked, t e l l i n g of Annie's blue veins and scaly elbows, making Annie something more alarming than a ll the t e r r i b l e shapes of dreams. Annie glued an ear to her window pane. Her thin beagle face was strained, t i g h t , wrinkled with painful cariosity. She whipped to the door and suddenly appeared on the sidewalk faster than the boys could comprehend. Her neck was soppy with sweat, her ancient dress hung s t r a i g h t down from shoulder t o calf. Her stringy stockings bulged around her ankles like balled up fish netting. ~ Her scuffed shoes made s l i t h e r noises like hisses of grass snakes. She pounced on Holder's cardboard suitcase, fanning the youngsters away. "You stay away from Mrs. Shelton's melons, you two! You hear me maw I I aaw you-both? You hear me now, I saw you both!" |