Georgia Boy by Erskine Caldwell

around in front of the shows. The tents had large colored pictures painted on big sheets of canvas stretched across the front of them, and every show had a stand where somebody was shouting and selling tickets at the same time. My old man stopped in front of one of the tents that had pictures of naked girls on it.
    “Have you got a dime in your pocket to spare, son?” he whispered to me. “I’ll pay it back to you the first chance I get.”
    I shook my head and told him all I had was the quarter I had been keeping to pay my way into the Wild West show with when the carnival came to town.
    “You just lend me the quarter now, son,” he said, poking my pants pocket with his finger. “I’ll give it back to you in no time at all. You won’t even miss it, it’ll be that quick.”
    “But I want to see the Wild West show, Pa!” I told him, putting my hand in my pocket and locking the quarter in my fist. “Can’t I keep it for that, Pa? Please let me keep it! I saved for more than two weeks to get this much.”
    The man who was selling the tickets picked up a long yellow megaphone and shouted through it. My old man got real nervous and started prancing up and down and pulling at my pocket.
    “Now, look here, son,” he said. “There ain’t a bit of sense in me and you arguing over a little thing like a quarter. By the time you want to spend it, I’ll have it back for you, and you won’t miss it none at all.”
    “But Ma told us to find Handsome,” I said. “We’d better go look for him, anyway. You know Ma. She’ll be as mad as all get-out if we don’t find him and take him back home.”
    “Looking for a pesky darkey can wait,” he said, getting a good grip on my arm and trying to pull my fists out of my pocket. “I know what I’m talking about, son, when I say you ought to lend me that quarter you’ve got in your pocket without a bit more argument. Ain’t I always lent you a dime, or whatever it was, from time to time, providing I had it, when you asked me for it? Now, it’s only fair that you lend me that quarter for a little while.”
    Music started up inside the tent, and the man selling the tickets shouted again.
    “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” he said, looking straight at my old man. “The show’s about to begin! The unadorned-dancing-girls-of-all-nations are getting ready to perform! Don’t miss the show of your lifetime! Don’t live to regret it. Step right up and buy your ticket before it’s too late! The girls want to dance—don’t keep them waiting! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
    “See there, son?” my old man said, getting a tight grip on my arm and pulling with all his might. “The show’s about to start and I’ll miss seeing it if I don’t get in there right away!”
    He pulled my fist out of my pocket and pried open my fingers. He was a lot stronger than I was, and I couldn’t hold on to the quarter any longer. He got it and ran up to the man selling the tickets. As soon as he could get his hand on it he grabbed the ticket and dashed inside the tent. There wasn’t anything I could do then, so I just sat down beside one of the tent stakes and waited. The music began getting louder and louder, and I could hear somebody inside the tent beating on drums. After about five minutes, the music suddenly stopped, and somebody threw back the flaps on the tent. A crowd of men came piling outside, and right behind them, the next to the last one to leave, was my old man. He looked a lot calmer than he did when he went in, but he walked straight into an electric light pole before he knew what he was doing.
    “Can I have the change from my quarter, Pa?” I asked him, running and catching up. “Can I, Pa?”
    “Not now, son,” he said, rubbing the side of his face that had hit the pole. “It’s perfectly safe right here in my pocket. You might lose it if you carried it.”
    We walked up between two rows of tents, looking all the time for Handsome. It wasn’t until we had got almost to the last