"If I hadn't gotten gay and planted those beans," he added, "I'd be feeling fine over it.

A girl gave me a handful of pinto beans and asked me to plant them--I did hoe them," he defended tardily to Andy.

"I hoed them the day before the Fourth.

You know I did.

Same time you hoed those lemon-colored spuds of yours." Luck let them wrangle humorously over their agricultural deficiencies, and drifted off into open-eyed dreaming.