“What’s the matter with you?” Doc says. “You’re still three points to the good.”
“Yes,” I says, “If I happened to be selling. I haven’t mentioned that yet, I think. You boys all cleaned out?”
“I got caught twice,” Doc says. “I switched just in time.”
“Well,” I. O. Snopes says, “I’ve picked hit; I reckon taint no more than fair fer hit to pick me once in a while.”
So I left them buying and selling among themselves at a nickel a point. I found a nigger and sent him for my car and stood on the corner and waited. I couldn’t see Earl looking up and down the street, with one eye on the clock, because I couldn’t see the door from here. After about a week he got back with it.
“Where the hell have you been?” I says, “Riding around where the wenches could see you?”
“I come straight as I could,” he says, “I had to drive clean around the square, wid all dem wagons.”
I never found a nigger yet that didn’t have an airtight alibi for whatever he did. But just turn one loose in a car and he’s bound to show off. I got in and went on around the square. I caught a glimpse of Earl in the door across the square.
I went straight to the kitchen and told Dilsey to hurry up with dinner.
“Quentin aint come yit,” she says.
“What of that?” I says. “You’ll be telling me next that Luster’s not quite ready to eat yet. Quentin knows when meals are served in this house. Hurry up with it, now.”