Full of Beans

Beans and Kermit arrive at Johnny Cakes factory building in the cigar industry district of Key West, empty now as most businesses folded due to the tough economic times. Johnny Cakes swears the two to secrecy, then reveals dozens of coffins. Beans is horrified when Johnny opens one, but he shows them that liquor bottles fill the coffins. He wants the boys to deliver his alcohol (illegal because he refused to pay tax on it) to the bars of Key West in their wagon under a blanket, telling anyone who asks that it is their baby brother sleeping. Beans agrees, negotiating a dime each for the day’s work. It goes so successfully that he wonders why he did not turn criminal long ago.

Beans enjoys the new Shirley Temple movie very much; he dreams of getting a screen test for an acting role with Warner Brothers, thinking, “Acting didn’t even look that hard. All you had to do was pretend” (53). He sees a curious man in a fedora wearing gloves in the balcony; after the picture, Beans realizes the man left a glass-topped walking stick. He takes it to the ticket seller, Bring Back My Hammer (because he often says this to those who borrow his hammer), who tells Beans it may have been a “haint;” he sold no ticket to someone matching that description.