” ‘ Do it slow,Honey Face. Do it slow. He’s give me a sick headache.’
“So they burned the nigger and that ol’boy took his wife and went back up to Texarkana without paying for the gasoline and old Whispering Lou runs the service station couldn’t talk about nothing else all Fall: ‘These city fellers come down here and burn a nigger and don’t even settle up for the gasoline.’
“Well, Chester Hoot tore that nigger shack down and rebuilt it just back of his house up in Bled Valley.
Covered up all the windows with black cloth, and what goes on in there ain’t fittin’ to speak of. . . Now Chester he’s got some right strange ways. . .Well it was just where the nigger shack used to be, right across from the Old Brooks place floods out every Spring, only it wasn’t the Brooks place then. . .belonged to a feller name of Scranton. Now that piece of land was surveyed back in 1919. . .I reckon you know the man did the job too. . .Feller name of Hump Clarence used to witch out wells on the side. . . Good ol’boy too, not a finer man in this Zone than Hump come on Ted Spigot ascrewin a mud puppy.”
Lee cleared his throat.The Clerk looked up over his glasses.”Now if you’ll take care, young feller, till I finish what I’m asaying,I’ll tend to your business.”
And he plunged into an anecdote about a nigra got the hydrophobia from a cow.
“So my pappy says to me:’Finish up your chores,son, and let’s go see the mad nigger. . .’ They had that nigger chained to the bed, and he was bawling like a cow. . .I soon got enough of that nigger.Well,if