every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun so janie had another day and every day had a store in it except sundays store itself was a pleasant place if only she didn't have to sell things when the people sat around on the porch and passed around the pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see it was nice the fact that the thought pictures were always crayon enlargements of life made it even nicer to listen to take for instance the case of matt bonner's yellow mule they had him up for conversation every day the lord sent most especially if matt was there himself to listen sam and elijah and walter were the ringleaders of the new talkers the others threw in whatever they could chance upon but it seemed as if sam and elijah and walter could hear and see more about that mew than the whole county put together all they needed was to see matt's long spare shape coming down the street and by the time he got to the porch they were ready for him hello matt evening sam everybody glad you come along right now matt me and some others were just about to come hunch it what fuss i am mighty serious madam man serious yeah man the lies were cutting doe for it it needs your strict attention you ought not to lose no time what is it then you ought to help him tell me reckon we better not tell you he understood it's too far off to do any good we better walk on down by lake siberia what's wrong man all right after none y'all's foolishness now that mueller young matt you better go see about him he's bad off where abouts did he wait in the lake in a alligator catching worse than that the women folks got your mule when i come round the lake by noon time my wife and some others had him flat on the ground using his sides for a washboard the great clap of laughter that they had been holding in bursts out sam never cracks a smile yeah matt that mute so skinny to the woman is using his rib bones for a rubber board and hanging things out on his hock bones to dry matt realizes that they have tricked him again and the laughter makes him mad and when he gets mad he stammers he uses thinking like sam and your feet ain't mates you you you you you you oh man they don't using you getting mad you know you don't feed the mule how ain't going to get fat does feed him i i give him a full cup of corn ever feeding lies knows all about that cup of cone he hid around your bun and watched you they don't feed a cup you measures that corn otter it's a tea cup i just feed him he's just too mean for to get fat he stay po and raw bony just for spite he's scared he'll have to work some yeah you feed him feed him off for come up and season it with rawhide does feed the honorary vomit don't care what i do i can't get along with him he fights every inch in front of the plow and even lay back his ears to kick and bite when i go into the stall to feed him get reconciled mad lies soothed us all knows he's mean i seen him when he took after one of them roberts chilling in the street and would have caught him and maybe troubled him to death if the wind hadn't changed all of a sudden you see the youngin was trying to make it to the fences stalks his onion patch and the mule were dead in behind him and gaining on him every jump when all of a sudden the wind changed and blowed the mule way off his course him being so poor and everything and before the honorary vomit could attack the youngin had done got over the fence the ports laughed and matt got mad again maybe the mew takes out after everybody sam said because he thinks everybody here coming is matt bonner coming to work him on an empty stomach oh no no no no you stop that right now walter objected that mule don't think i look like no matt bonner he ain't that dumb if i thought he didn't know no better i'd have my pics it took and give it to that mule so she could learn better i ain't gonna allow him to hold nothing like that against me matt struggled to say something but his tongue failed him so he jumped down off the porch and walked away as mad as he could be but that never halted the mule talk there would be more stories about how poor the brute was his age his evil disposition and his latest kpop everybody indulged in mule talk he was next to the mayor in prominence and made better talking jd loved the conversation and sometimes she thought of good stories on the mule but joe had forbidden her to indulge he didn't want her talking after such trashy people use mrs mayor starks janie my god i can't see what a woman or your stability would want to be treasuring all that gum grease from folks that don't even own the house they sleep in they know earth for use there's just some puny humans playing around the toes of time jaina noted that while he didn't talk the mule himself he sat and laughed at it laughed his big laugh too but then when elijah sam or walter or some of the other big picture talkers were using a side of the world for a canvas joe would hustle her off inside the store to sell something look like he took pleasure in doing it why couldn't he go himself sometimes she had come to hate the inside of that store anyway that post office too people always come in and asking for mail at the wrong time just when she was trying to count up something or write in an account book get her so heckled she'd make the wrong change for stamps then two she couldn't read everybody's writing some folks wrote so funny and spelt things different from what she knew about as a rule joe put up the mail himself but sometimes when he was off she had to do it herself and it always ended up in a fuss the store itself kept her with a sick headache the labor of getting things down off of a shelf or out of a barrel was nothing and so long as people wanted only a can of tomatoes or a pound of rice it was all right but supposing they went on and said a pound and a half of bacon and a half pound of lard the whole thing changed from a little walking and stretching to a mathematical dilemma or maybe cheese was 37 cents a pound and somebody came and asked for a dime's worth she went through many silent rebellions over things like that such a waste of life and time but joe kept saying that she could do it if she wanted to and he wanted her to use her privileges that was the rock she was battered [Music] against [Music] you