“The Lord giveth.”
That boy is not there. Peabody told about how he come into the kitchen, hollering, swarming and clawing at Cora when he found her cooking that fish, and how Dewey Dell taken him down to the barn. “My team all right?” Peabody says.
“All right,” I tell him. “I give them a bait this morning. Your buggy seems all right too. It ain’t hurt.”
“And no fault of somebody’s,” he says. “I’d give a nickel to know where that boy was when that team broke away.”
“If it’s broke anywhere, I’ll fix it,” I say.
The womenfolks go on into the house. We can hear them, talking and fanning. The fans go whish, whish, whish and them talking, the talking sounding kind of like bees murmuring in a water-bucket. The men stop on the porch, talking some, not looking at one another.
“Howdy, Vernon,” they say. “Howdy, Tull.”
“Looks like more rain.”
“It does for a fact.”
“Yes, sir. It will rain some more.”
“It come up quick.”
“And going away slow. It don’t fail.”
I go around to the back. Cash is filling up the holes he bored in the top of it. He is trimming out plugs for them, one at a time, the wood wet and hard to work. He could cut up a tin can and hide the holes and nobody wouldn’t know the difference. Wouldn’t mind, anyway. I have seen him