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BERNARD JR/S UNCLE LUSCIOUS/ EmilyRaboteau WE DON'T WANNA GO," the boys said at the same time. It was the first Saturday of the summer, and they were salting a slug under the pecan tree out back. Nanan Zanobia adjusted her piUbox hat. "What you mean you don't wanna go?" she asked, pointing her eyes at B. J., who was short, serious and round as a potato. "I know I don't have to remind you she's your mother." Then she pointed her eyes at Luscious, who was long, pretty and thin as a string bean. "And I know I don't have to remind you she's your sister." Nobody knew just how old Nan Zan was or how many other people's chUdren she'd raised, but everyone agreed she had scary eyes. Her face was dark as a chestnut, but her irises were so Ught blue they were almost white. "Or am I gonna have to remind you with a switch from this tree?" "No, ma'am," said B. J., looking down at his corrective shoe. For most of his early childhood he'd worn a brace on his right leg, which had been twisted inward at birth, and he stiU walked with a limp. "But Nan, I'm supposed to help out Miss Pauline at the Curly-Q today," whined Luscious. He had a slight lisp and was rumored to be a pansy. "You got a summerful of Sairdays to be Miss Pauline's shampoo boy. Today you're going to visit your sister up at the hospital and stop giving me Up, hear?" Luscious looked down at the place in front of his bare feet where the salted slug was turning inside out like the wrong side of an eyelid . "Good Lord. Is that one of God's creatures?" "Yes, ma'am," answered B. J., pushing up on the bridge of his glasses, although they hadn't sUpped down his nose. The slug was writhing and oozing in the dust, like a rabid tongue. "What I tell you two about tormenting animals?" "It's just a bug," mumbled Luscious, rolling his eyes. "What I teU you?" "Do unto others," they said at the same time. "That's right. Everybody 'just a bug' to someone else who think they bigger and better. That don't mean they a bug. It mean someone The Missouri Review ยท 153 else got a problem with they eyes. Now get in the house, wash up and throw on your Sunday clothes. We got a bus to catch." "I don't care what she says. A slug is a bug," Luscious said under his breath as they trudged past the chicken coop toward the back of the shotgun shack, up the saggingporch, through the kitchen and into the airless boxcar of a room they shared. Luscious had lived there since he was a baby, when his mama ran off to Chicago to sing in a nightclub and got herseU stabbed on Blackhawk Street. Bernard had lived there since the age of three, when his mama finally lost her mind at the five and dime after trying twice to drown herself in the Gulf of Mexico and once to slice her wrists with the lid of a peach can. People still talked about it. How she had pushed over one shelf with a half a ton of merchandise onto the one behind it and how aU the shelves toppled down in slow motion Uke a Une of dominoes, the last one shattering the storefront window and disfiguring Dudley, the waterhead man, who was sweeping the sidewalk out front. Nobody blamed her after what she'd been through, but everyone agreed with the judge's order when he sent her over to Biloxi to get her head straightened out. "And if that place is a hospital then my name's Dwight D. Eisenhower ." "Shhh," whispered B. J. "She can still hear you." The boys were twelve and thirteen now. Even though Luscious was only eight months older, he insisted that B. J. call him "Uncle." "Miss Pauline was gon' pay me fitty cents for washing heads, too." "Hush, Uncle Luscious. She...

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