And Darl, too. Talking me out of him, durn them. It ain’t that I am afraid of work; I always have fed me and mine and kept a roof above us: it’s that they would shorthand me just because he tends to his own business, just because he’s got his eyes full of the land all the time. I says to them, he was all right at first, with his eyes full of the land, because the land laid up-and-down ways then; it wasn’t till that ere road come and switched the land around longways and his eyes still full of the land, that they begun to threaten me out of him, trying to shorthand me with the law.
Making me pay for it. She was well and hale as ere a woman ever were, except for that road. Just laying down, resting herself in her own bed, asking naught of none. “Are you sick, Addie?” I said.
“I am not sick,” she said.
“You lay you down and rest you,” I said. “I knowed you are not sick. You’re just tired. You lay you down and rest.”
“I am not sick,” she said. “I will get up.”
“Lay still and rest,” I said. “You are just tired. You can get up tomorrow.” And she was laying there, well and hale as ere a woman ever were, except for that road.
“I never sent for you,” I said. “I take you to witness I never sent for you.”
“I know you didn’t,” Peabody said. “I bound that. Where is she?”
“She’s a-laying down,” I said. “She’s just a little tired, but she’ll—”
“Get outen here, Anse,” he said. “Go set on the porch a while.”
And now I got to pay for it, me without a tooth in my head, hoping to get ahead enough so I could get my mouth fixed where I could eat God’s