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you I was a power in this town. Junior and me can go a long way, using his
talent to help us.
"Already I've got on to the board of aldermen here and there's gonna be a
vacancy in the state senate come next week-unless the old coot I have in
mind's a lot tougher than he looks. So I'm warning you, young Hogben, you and
your family's gonna pay for them insults."
"Nobody oughta get mad when he hears the gospel truth about himself," I said.
"Junior is a repulsive specimen."
"He just takes getting used to," his paw said. "All us Pughs is hard to
understand. Deep, I guess.
But we got our pride. And I'm gonna make sure the family line never dies out.
Never, do you hear that, Lemuel?"
Uncle Lem just shut his eyes up tight and shook his head fast. "Nosirree," he
said. "I'll never do it. Never, never, never, never-"
"Lemuel," Ed Pugh said, real sinister. "Lemuel, do you want me to set Junior
on you?"
"Oh, there ain't no use in that," I said. "You seen him try to hex me along
with the crowd, didn't you? No manner of use, Mister Pugh. Can't hex a
Hogben."
"Well-" He looked around, searching his mind. "Hm-m. I'll think of something.
I'll-soft-hearted, aren't you? Promised your Grandpappy you wouldn't kill
nobody, hey? Lemuel, open your eyes and look over there across the street. See
that sweet old lady walking with the cane? How'd you like it if I had Junior
drop her dead in her tracks?"
Uncle Lemuel just squeezed his eyes tighter shut.
"I won't look. I don't know the sweet old thing. If she's that old, she ain't
got much longer anyhow. Maybe she'd be better off dead. Probably got rheumatiz
something fierce."
"All right, then, how about that purty young girl with the baby in her arms?
Look, Lemuel. Mighty sweet-looking little baby. Pink ribbon in its bonnet,
see? Look at them dimples. Junior, get ready to blight them where they stand.
Bubonic plague to start with maybe. And after that-"
"Uncle Lem," I said, feeling uneasy. "I dunno what Grandpaw would say to this.
Maybe-"
Uncle Lem popped his eyes wide open for just a second. He glared at me,
frantic.
"I can't help it if I've got a heart of gold," he said. "I'm a fine old feller
and everybody picks on me. Well, I won't stand for it. You can push me just so
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far. Now I don't care if Ed Pugh kills off the whole human race. I don't care
if Grandpaw does find out what I done. I don't care a hoot about nothing no
more." He gave a kind of wild laugh.
"I'm gonna get out from under. I won't know nothing about nothing. I'm gonna
snatch me a few winks, Saunk."
And with that he went rigid all over and fell flat on his face on the
sidewalk, stiff as a poker.
Chapter 3. Over a Barrel
Well, worried as I was, I had to smile. Uncle Lem's kinda cute sometimes. I
knowed he'd put hisseif to sleep again, the way he always does when trouble
catches up with him. Paw says it's catalepsy but cats sleep a lot lighter than
that.
Uncle Lem hit the sidewalk flat and kinda bounced a little. Junior give a howl
of joy. I guess maybe he figgered he'd had something to do with Uncle Lem
falling over. Anyhow, seeing somebody down and helpless, Junior naturally
rushed over and pulled his foot back and kicked Uncle Lem in the side of the
haid.
Well, like I said, us Hogbens have got pretty tough haids. Junior let out a
howl. He started dancing around nursing his foot in both hands.
"I'll hex you good!" he yelled at Uncle Lem. "I'll hex you good, you- you ole
Hogben, you!" He drew a deep breath and turned purple in the face and- And
then it happened.
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It was like a flash of lightning. I don't take no stock in hexes, and I had a
fair idea of what was happening, but it took me by surprise. Paw tried to
explain to me later how it worked and he said it just stimulated the latent
toxins inherent in the organism. It made Junior into a catalytoxic agent on
account of the way the rearrangement of the desoxyribonucleic acid his genes
was made of worked on the kappa waves of his nasty little brain, stepping them
up as much as thirty microvolts. But shucks, you know Paw. He's too lazy to
figger the thing out in English. He just steals them fool words out of other
folks' brains when he needs 'em.
What really happened was that all the pizon that little varmint had bottled up
in him, ready to let go on the crowd, somehow seemed to r'ar back and smack
Uncle Lem right in the face. I never seen such a hex. And the awful part
was-it worked.
Because Uncle Lem wasn't resisting a mite now he was asleep. Red-hot pokers
wouldn't have waked him up and I wouldn't put red-hot pokers past little
Junior Pugh. But he didn't need 'em this time. The hex hit Uncle Lem like a
thunderbolt.
He turned pale green right before our eyes.
Somehow it seemed to me a turrible silence fell as Uncle Lem went green. I
looked up, surprised.
Then I realized what was happening. All that pitiful moaning and groaning from
the crowd had stopped.
People was swigging away at their bottles of headache cure, rubbing their
foreheads and kinda laughing weak-like with relief. Junior's whole complete
hex had gone into Uncle Lem and the crowd's headaches had naturally stopped
right off.
"What's happened here?" somebody called out in a kinda familiar voice. "Has
that man fainted? Why don't you help him? Here, let me by-I'm a doctor."
It was the skinny man with the kind-looking face. He was still drinking out of
the headache bottle as he pushed his way through the crowd toward us but he'd
put his notebook away. When he saw Ed
Pugh he flushed up angrylike.
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