“No,” Jewel said.
“You take off and stay in the house today,” ma said.
“With that whole bottom piece to be busted out?” pa said. “If you ain’t sick, what’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” Jewel said. “I’m all right.”
“All right?” pa said. “You’re asleep on your feet this minute.”
“No,” Jewel said. “I’m all right.”
“I want him to stay at home today,” ma said.
“I’ll need him,” pa said. “It’s tight enough, with all of us to do it.”
“You’ll just have to do the best you can with Cash and Darl,” ma said. “I want him to stay in today.”
But he wouldn’t do it. “I’m all right,” he said, going on. But he wasn’t all right. Anybody could see it. He was losing flesh, and I have seen him go to sleep chopping; watched the hoe going slower and slower up and down, with less and less of an arc, until it stopped and he leaning on it motionless in the hot shimmer of the sun.
Ma wanted to get the doctor, but pa didn’t want to spend the money without it was needful, and Jewel did seem all right except for his thinness and his way of dropping off to sleep at any moment. He ate hearty enough, except for his way of going to sleep in his plate, with a piece of bread halfway to his mouth and his jaws still chewing. But he swore he was all right.
It was ma that got Dewey Dell to do his milking, paid her somehow, and the other jobs around the house that Jewel had been doing before supper