Page 2 of Defending Casey

Oh, the outsides of the feed sacks had been updated and the prices, whoa, those had been raised, but the shelves and even the posters on the wall didn’t seem to have changed a lick.

Hale shook his head. “Damn.”

“Uh oh.” A little voice piped up from behind the counter to his right.

Turning to look in that direction, Hale found himself walking up to the counter so he could look over it. Sitting down on the ground behind the counter, a couple of toy horses on the ground and in her lap, was a little girl.

Long brown hair braided, dangling down over both of her shoulders, she wore a t-shirt printed with words in bold proclaiming I’M A COWGIRL, DEAL WITH IT.

“Hey there.”

She grinned up at him. “Hay is for horses-”

“And cows that go moo.”

Her smile widened and he could see that she had a few of her adult teeth in the front of her mouth. “That’s why we say, ‘Hello.’”

He nodded, duly chastised. “Hello.”

“Hey,” she gave him a smile that crinkled up the bridge of her nose. “May I help you?”

“Uh,” he didn’t know what to make of the little girl, “is Mister Sumner around?”

A crease formed between her eyebrows as she thought for a moment. “Uncle Sam?”

Hale was at a loss.

He’d never called the man by his first name, but he was surprised that he was struggling to remember if he’d heard him called by the name Sam before.

Getting up from the floor, she set one of her horses on the counter before she pointed up at the wall. “Is that him?”

Hale looked up at the framed photo and smiled. Mister Sumner was standing at the counter with a big grin on his face. He’d aged a bit, put on a few pounds and added a beard to his full mustache. The little girl before him was also in the picture, sitting on the counter with a smile that showed that she was missing one of her front teeth.

“Yeah. That’s Mister Sumner. So, he’s your uncle?”

She shrugged. “That’s what I call him, but some folks say we’re not blood, so it doesn’t count.” Grimacing, she leaned forward and ‘whispered’ to him. “But I don’t know why people want blood, that’s gross.”

Hale had seen his share of it over the years. “I agree. Blood is pretty gross.”

His words were met with immediate approval. “My mom thinks so too. When I skinned my elbow, she looked almost green when she had to clean it before she put a Band-Aid on it. She cried a little too.”

“Because of the blood?”

The little girl shook her head. “Nope. It’s ‘cause she loves me, and she said I scared her nearly to death.”

The grin on the little girl’s face faded a little. “I didn’t mean to scare her.”

“She knows that.”

She looked up at him. “I guess, but she tells me all that time that she worries about me. I worry about her too, so I guess that’s fair, right?”

“Yeah, that sounds fair.” He couldn’t help but smile at her earnest tone and the open, pleading look in her eyes. She really was a good kid. Pretty too.

As he looked at her, he narrowed his gaze on her face. She looked familiar.

He just couldn’t seem to put his finger on it.

“So,” he cleared his throat, “your Uncle Sam, is he here?”

---