his
switch and grunting every time he swung and every time he said
"that...."

I knew what he was thinking about,--the snowball I'd thrown in our
schoolyard that week, which had accidentally hit our new teacher right
in the middle of the top of his bald head....

Well, in a jiffy, Circus had both those switches stuck into the snow
man, right where his right hand was supposed to be.... Then, he
reached into his pocket, and pulled out an ear of corn, and as quick
as anything began to shell it ... shoving handfulls of the big yellow
kernels into his pocket at the same time, and a jiffy later, all that
was left was a long red corn-cob, which he broke in half and stuck one
of the halves into the snowman's face for a nose.

Then also as quick as anything, he took the other half of the red
corn-cob and with his knife made a hole in its side near the bottom,
took a small stick out of his pocket, stuck it into the cob! "What on
earth?" I thought, and said so, but he said, "All right, everybody,
shut your eyes," which we wouldn't, so we watched him finish what he
was doing, which was making a pipe for the snow man to smoke.... A
jiffy later, there it was, sticking into the snow man's snow face
right under his nose--a corn-cob pipe.... It looked very funny, and
for a jiffy we all laughed, all except Little Jim who just giggled a
little.

We all stood back and looked at it, and it was the funniest looking
snow man I'd ever seen.... Brown hair all around his head, and none in
the middle of the top or the front, and a big red nose, and a corn-cob
pipe sticking out at an angle, and black walnuts for buttons on his
coat, and a couple of fierce-looking switches in his hand. Also there
were two thin corn silk eyebrows that curled up a little....

"There's only one thing wrong with it," Poetry said, in his duck-like
voice, standing beside me and squinting up at the ridiculous looking
snow man.

"What?" I said, thinking how perfect it was.

"You can't tell who it is supposed to be. It needs some extra
identification."

"It's perfect," I said, and looked at Little Jim to see if he didn't
think the same thing, but he was looking up into the beech tree again,
like he was still thinking about something mysterious and wasn't
interested in an ordinary snow man. I looked toward Dragonfly and he
was listening toward a half dozen little cedar trees in the direction
of the bayou, like he was either seeing or hearing something, which he