5

Jack Hodge 5
flat. He was pasty with a sickness that does not stride, but seeps in like
a slow poison. The sickness had risen like vapor, had penetrated his teeth
and his skin.

"What kind or work did you do in Florida?" I got no answer.

"What are you doing now?" I got no answer.

And he let me talk in and around these questions and others, but he
told me that he wanted me to know. From somewhere he fetched forth a
splinter or a straw; and he punched the snuff-stained teeth, the stubs.
His talk was rough and country. He was full of double negatives, aints, and
abruptness.

Then: "I was a good-um here in Red Bay. I made money---enough for
me alone. You know that," he pleaded. "I wore a blue serge suit all the
time." I smiled at the memory of him; for he had worn a suit, a blue serge
suit, but I had never marked it as a suit. It couldn't ever have been pressed
or cleaned. It molded his frame, and was part of him, not an ornament.
In a city he would have been considered a tramp, a hobo, but there he had
been just Jack Hodge. People spoke to him, smiled in greeting. He never was
very sociable, however, never attended church, not even during revival meetings.

"I'm in a hole. All them years I spent in the words is gone, the
clearing of them hills is wasted." He spoke in that slow, full-of-pauses
tone. He did not look into my face, but bit his splinter or his straw, and
shuffled his heavy shoes on a cigarette butt.

"It gits a feller, when he can't git a dollar, especially when he usta
could. I was having a better time of it in the depression than I am now.

"I'd have stayed on that farm," he said, "if it had been any use. I
couldn't make no money a-tall. I tried potatoes one year, and it was the
only one I got anything out of, and it didn't 'mount to more'n $50 or
thereabouts. I didn't do no good on corn. Wasn't no use to raise no cotton.
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