2

Auntie knowed it was hurting me. I didn’t tell nobody but Ty, ’cause we buddies and he ain’t go’n tell nobody. But some kind of way Auntie found out. When she asked me, I told her no, nothing was wrong. But she knowed it all the time. She told me to mash up a piece of aspirin and wrap it in some cotton and jugg it down in that hole. I did it, but it didn’t do no good. It stopped for a little while, and started right back again. Auntie wanted to tell Mama, but I told her, “Uh-uh.” ’Cause I knowed we didn’t have any money, and it just was go’n make her mad again. So Auntie told Monsieur Bayonne, and Monsieur Bayonne came over to the house and told me to kneel down ’side him on the fireplace. He put his finger in his mouth and made the Sign of the Cross on my jaw. The tip of Monsieur Bayonne’s finger is some hard, ’cause he’s always playing on that guitar. If we sit outside at night we can always hear Monsieur Bayonne playing on his guitar. Sometimes we leave him out there playing on the guitar.

Monsieur Bayonne made the Sign of the Cross over and over on my jaw, but that didn’t do no good. Even when he prayed and told me to pray some, too, that tooth still hurt me.

“How you feeling?” he say.

“Same,” I say.

He kept on praying and making the Sign of the Cross and I kept on praying, too.

“Still hurting?” he say.

“Yes, sir.”

Monsieur Bayonne mashed harder and harder on my jaw. He mashed so hard he almost pushed me over on Ty. But then he stopped.

“What kind of prayers you praying, boy?” he say.

“Baptist,” I say.

“Well, I’ll be—no wonder that tooth still killing him. I’m going one way and he pulling the other. Boy, don’t you know any Catholic prayers?”

“I know ‘Hail Mary,’ ” I say.

“Then you better start saying it.”

“Yes, sir.”

He started mashing on my jaw again, and I could hear him praying at the same time. And, sure enough, after while it stopped hurting me.

Me and Ty went outside where Monsieur Bayonne’s two hounds was and we started playing with them. “Let’s go hunting,” Ty say. “All right,” I say; and we went on back in the pasture. Soon the hounds got on a trail, and me and Ty followed them all ’cross the pasture and then back in the woods, too. And then they cornered this little old rabbit and killed him, and me and Ty made them get back, and we picked up the rabbit and started on back home. But my tooth had started hurting me again. It was hurting me plenty now, but I wouldn’t tell Monsieur Bayonne. That night I didn’t sleep a bit, and first thing in the morning Auntie told me to go back and let Monsieur Bayonne pray over me some more. Monsieur Bayonne was in his kitchen making coffee when I got there. Soon ’s he seen me he knowed what was wrong.

“All right, kneel down there ’side that stove,” he say. “And this time make sure you pray Catholic. I don’t know nothing ’bout that Baptist, and I don’t want know nothing ’bout him.”