“I bet you wont go up en tech him.”
“How come I wont?”
“I bet you wont. I bet you skeered to.”
“He wont hurt folks. He des a loony.”
“How come a loony wont hurt folks?”
“Dat un wont. I teched him.”
“I bet you wont now.”
“Case Miss Dilsey lookin.”
“You wont no ways.”
“He dont hurt folks. He des a loony.”
And steadily the older people speaking to Dilsey, though, unless they were quite old, Dilsey permitted Frony to respond.
“Mammy aint feelin well dis mawnin.”
“Dat’s too bad. But Rev’un Shegog’ll cure dat. He’ll give her de comfort en de unburdenin.”
The road rose again, to a scene like a painted backdrop. Notched into a cut of red clay crowned with oaks the road appeared to stop short off, like a cut ribbon. Beside it a weathered church lifted its crazy steeple like a painted church, and the whole scene was as flat and without perspective as a painted cardboard set upon the ultimate edge of the flat earth,