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window. They saw the men who had tried to take the treasure sitting on the curb near
the corner. One of them had his pants leg up, looking at his knee.

“You sure you’re not hurt?” Greg asked Lemon Brown.

“Nothing that ain’t been hurt before,” Lemon Brown said. “When you get as old as me
all you say when something hurts is, ‘Howdy, Mr. Pain, sees you back again.’ Then when

Mr. Pain see he can’t worry you none, he go on mess with somebody else.”
Greg smiled.

“Here, you hold this.” Lemon Brown gave Greg the flashlight.
He sat on the floor near Greg and carefully untied the strings that held the rags on his

right leg. When he took the rags away, Greg saw a piece of plastic. The old man carefully
took off the plastic and unfolded it. He revealed some yellowed newspaper clippings
and a battered harmonica.

“There it be,” he said, nodding his head. “There it be.”

Greg looked at the old man, saw the distant look in his eye, then turned to the clippings.
They told of Sweet Lemon Brown, a blues singer and harmonica player who was
appearing at different theaters in the South. One of the clippings said he had been the

hit of the show, although not the headliner. All of the clippings were reviews of shows
Lemon Brown had been in more than fifty years ago. Greg looked at the harmonica. It
was dented badly on one side, with the reed holes on one end nearly closed.

“I used to travel around and make money to feed my wife and Jesse—that’s my boy’s
name. Used to feed them good, too. Then his mama died, and he stayed with his mama’s
sister. He growed up to be a man, and when the war come he saw fit to go off and
fight in it. I didn’t have nothing to give him except these things that told him who I

was, and what he come from. If you know your pappy did something, you know you
can do something too.

“Anyway, he went off to the war, and I went off still playing and singing. Course by
then I wasn’t as much as I used to be, not without somebody to make it worth the while.
You know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” Greg nodded, not quite really knowing.

“I traveled around, and one time I come home, and there was this letter saying Jesse
got killed in the war. Broke my heart, it truly did.

“They sent back what he had with him over there, and what it was is this old mouth
fiddle and these clippings. Him carrying it around with him like that told me it meant
something to him. That was my treasure, and when I give it to him he treated it just

like that, a treasure. Ain’t that something?”

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