“Who’s that?” I says.
“Dat’s Mr. Jason Compson,” he says. “Git up dar, Dan!”
One of the wheels was just about to come off. I watched to see if he’d get out of the alley before it did. Just turn any vehicle over to a nigger, though. I says that old rattletrap’s just an eyesore, yet you’ll keep it standing there in the carriage house a hundred years just so that boy can ride to the cemetery once a week. I says he’s not the first fellow that’ll have to do things he doesn’t want to. I’d make him ride in that car like a civilised man or stay at home. What does he know about where he goes or what he goes in, and us keeping a carriage and a horse so he can take a ride on Sunday afternoon.
A lot Job cared whether the wheel came off or not, long as he wouldn’t have too far to walk back. Like I say the only place for them is in the field, where they’d have to work from sunup to sundown. They cant stand prosperity or an easy job. Let one stay around white people for a while and he’s not worth killing. They get so they can outguess you about work before your very eyes, like Roskus the only mistake he ever made was he got careless one day and died. Shirking and stealing and giving you a little more lip and a little more lip until some day you have to lay them out with a scantling or something. Well, it’s Earl’s business. But I’d hate to have my business advertised over this town by an old doddering nigger and a wagon that you thought every time it turned a corner it would come all to pieces.
The sun was all high up in the air now, and inside it was beginning to get dark. I went up front. The square was empty. Earl was back closing the safe, and then the clock begun to strike.
“You lock the back door,” he says. I went back and locked it and came back. “I suppose you’re going to the show tonight,” he says. “I gave you those passes yesterday, didn’t I?”