on our dirt road, on windy days in the summertime. And for another, I couldn’t make mud cakes out of blacktop; that was for sure. So, I had no problem with our road not being paved. But the grownups had a huge problem with it.
Because one day I heard my Poppa say, “We pay taxes, too,” to Mr. Yancy, the fish man who drove a stinky, old, raggedy truck and sold us catfish and buffalo fish on Saturday mornings in the summertime. “Why can't we get our road paved? We ought to get a sidewalk, too. Shoot, when it rains, Eddie Sue, my wife can’t even get our car down here. Mayor Howard paved that road up yonder last year after umpteen years of promising he would do it. It's been more than a year, now, since his re’lection and I ain't seen no pavement down here yet.
Poppa locked his eye dead on Mr.
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Skelly’s front room, said “Who’s that” and startled me. My heartbeat got faster and pushed harder, ready to push straight through my chest.
“It’s Ja-Ja-Jackie, Mr. Skelly. My m-m-m-momma wanna bar borrow a k-k-k-k-k a cup of sugar,” I stuttered.
Mr. Skelly, a wifeless and dirty, old man hoarse voice grumped. It sounded like on the movie, Frankenstein’s voice when he plead to his creator for a wife. And Mr. Skelly’s grumpy, hoarse voice plead to me; “Please, come on in, Lil Miss Missy.”
With hesitation I pulled the makeshift door knob: a large, empty thread spool that had been hammered on with a big, rusty, U-shaped nail and was heavily marred with coal soot. My heart drummed triple time in my chest and prepared me to fight or flee. I took teeny-tiny baby steps, entered Mr. Skelly’s house, and landed just barely inside his front room, on the other side of his screen door. And fear dropped me right there; left me without the power to move even a half-inch farther inside, or the power to flee back to safety, to the other side of his screen