“It’s been there a long time, that ere bridge,” Quick says.
“The Lord has kept it there, you mean,” Uncle Billy says. “I don’t know ere a man that’s touched hammer to it in twenty-five years.”
“How long has it been there, Uncle Billy?” Quick says.
“It was built in … let me see … It was in the year 1888,” Uncle Billy says. “I mind it because the first man to cross it was Peabody coming to my house when Jody was born.”
“If I’d a crossed it every time your wife littered since, it’d a been wore out long before this, Billy,” Peabody says.
We laugh, suddenly loud, then suddenly quiet again. We look a little aside at one another.
“Lots of folks has crossed it that won’t cross no more bridges,” Houston says.
“It’s a fact,” Littlejohn says. “It’s so.”
“One more ain’t, no ways,” Armstid says. “It’d taken them two-three days to got her to town in the wagon. They’d be gone a week, getting her to Jefferson and back.”
“What’s Anse so itching to take her to Jefferson for, anyway?” Houston says.
“He promised her,” I say. “She wanted it. She come from there. Her mind was set on it.”
“And Anse is set on it, too,” Quick says.
“Ay,” Uncle Billy says. “It’s like a man that’s let everything slide all his life to get set on something that will make the most trouble for everybody he knows.”