When I told Cora how Darl jumped out of the wagon and left Cash sitting there trying to save it and the wagon turning over, and Jewel that was almost to the bank fighting that horse back where it had more sense than to go, she says “And you’re one of the folks that says Darl is the queer one, the one that ain’t bright, and him the only one of them that had sense enough to get off that wagon. I notice Anse was too smart to been on it a-tall.”
“He couldn’t ’a’ done no good, if he’d been there,” I said. “They was going about it right and they would have made it if it hadn’t a-been for that log.”
“Log, fiddlesticks,” Cora said. “It was the hand of God.”
“Then how can you say it was foolish?” I said. “Nobody can’t guard against the hand of God. It would be sacrilege to try to.”
“Then why dare it?” Cora says. “Tell me that.”
“Anse didn’t,” I said. “That’s just what you faulted him for.”
“His place was there,” Cora said. “If he had been a man, he would ’a’ been there instead of making his sons do what he dursn’t.”
“I don’t know what you want, then,” I said. “One breath you say they was daring the hand of God to try it, and the next breath you jump on Anse because he wasn’t with them.” Then she begun to sing again, working at the washtub, with that singing look in her face like she had done give up folks and all their foolishness and had done went on ahead of them, marching up the sky, singing.