At a band concert in the public square one night she met James Sixbixdix. There was no helping it. She dropped her eyes and threw her smiles at him. And for six weeks they kept steady company going to band concerts, dances, hayrack rides, picnics and high jinks together. “Why do you keep steady company with him? He’s a musical soup eater,” her relatives said to her. And she answered, “It’s a power—I can’t help myself.” Leaning down with her head in a rain water cistern one day, listening to the echoes against 78 the strange wooden walls of the cistern, the gold buckskin whincher on the little chain around her neck slipped off and fell down into the rain water. 78 “My luck is gone,” said Blixie. Then she went into the house and made two telephone calls. One was to James Sixbixdix telling him she couldn’t keep the date with him that night. The other was to Jimmy the Flea, the climber, the steeplejack. “Come on over—I got the blues and I want you to whistle ’em away,” was what she telephoned Jimmy the Flea. And so—if you ever come across a gold buckskin whincher, be careful. It’s got a power. It’ll make you fall head over heels in love with the next man you meet with an X in his name. Or it will do other strange things because different whinchers have different powers. 79 The Story of Jason Squiff and Why HeHad a Popcorn Hat, Popcorn Mittensand Popcorn Shoes Jason Squiff was a cistern cleaner. He had greenish yellowish hair. If you looked down into a cistern when he was lifting buckets of slush and mud you could tell where he was, you could pick him out down in the dark cistern, by the lights of his greenish yellowish hair. Sometimes the buckets of slush and mud tipped over and ran down on the top of his head. This covered his greenish yellowish hair. And then it was hard to tell where he was and it was 80 not easy to pick him out down in the dark where he was cleaning the cistern. 80 One day Jason Squiff came to the Bimber house and knocked on the door. “Did I understand,” he said, speaking to Mrs. Bimber, Blixie Bimber’s mother, “do I understand you sent for me to clean the
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