3

Jack Hodge 3
some of them hills and have something of mine. I thought my wife..." He
was embarrassed by a reference to a "wife." I was startled.

Jack was at a point, as anyone could see, that he talked of his misery.
He was conscious of his lot, and resented it in his ox-like way.

"I was in good shape back in '33. I could git money then, and I had
some in the bank. I was the only one that ever made any money out of papers.
I sold that Birmingham Post," he said with stubborn pride, as if grasping
for a hold on something firm. I smiled to cheet him, remembering well
his paper, his trudging on the streets of the town, papers under arms; and
later he had several boys working for him. One of the boys was named Tim.

"I didn't know you were married," I told Hodge. None of the town people
suspected he had a wife. He was not the type one would expect to find with
a wife. He belonged to that group of men who seemed set apart from women.
He seemed, as I looked at him in the gathering darkness, free from passion
and desire. He seemed lonely and made for his loneliness.

"It ain't good for a man to do what I did. You ain't supposed to be
away from people that uh way." He sought for a touch of humor, and the
dark-hued skin crinkled at the eyes. "You need an old lady in the woods;
it'd be fine that-way."

"You went for a month without seeing anybody or even reading the paper,
Hodge?"

He denied it with a show of dislike for the thought. "Not more'n a week,
but that is too much. You git to thinking. You git tired of yourself." He spoke
in that deep-in-the-mud spirit that robbed his utterance of melodrama and
picturesqueness. "The town boys would come over to see me, and that was
right smart help. And I had my chickens and my dog and that old mule to
plow with."

I remembered: "Game roosters?"
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