Summary

Chapter 7. It is the summer of 1924, and Richard is 16. He tries to find a job where he can earn more money than his part time work doing odd jobs at a white woman’s home. He gets a job temporarily at her husband’s brickyard. He is not strong enough to haul bricks, but he gets the job of water boy, bringing water all day to the laborers at $1.00 a day. The white boss’s dog bites him badly on the leg, and when the boss takes a look at it, he laughs and says, “A dog bite can’t hurt a nigger.”

When the brick yard closes he gets a job as a caddie at a golf course five miles away, but that doesn’t go well either since he knows nothing about the game of golf. Summer ends and he enters the ninth...