The band was playing again, a loud fast tune, like they were breaking up. I reckon they’d be satisfied now. Maybe they’d have enough music to entertain them while they drove fourteen or fifteen miles home and unharnessed in the dark and fed the stock and milked. All they’d have to do would be to whistle the music and tell the jokes to the live stock in the barn, and then they could count up how much they’d made by not taking the stock to the show too. They could figure that if a man had five children and seven mules, he cleared a quarter by taking his family to the show. Just like that. Earl came back with a couple of packages.

“Here’s some more stuff going out,” he says. “Where’s Uncle Job?”

“Gone to the show, I imagine,” I says. “Unless you watched him.”

“He doesn’t slip off,” he says. “I can depend on him.”

“Meaning me by that,” I says.

He went to the door and looked out, listening.