ENPages
Alabama 6
He was speaking slowly and profoundly, searching himself for an honest opinion. His brother was talking to another fellow about the Bible, and Mason was talking politics. Sometimes Bony's brother would raise his voice and wave his arms, and they knew he was preaching.
"I believe in giving a boy a education," said Bony. The visitor knew that he was sending a nephew to Auburn. "A feller needs all the chances he can get."
"Back in my day boys didn't have no hanging-out places. We had tuh work all the week, and Sunday after church was all the time we had. We'd played townball. We couldn't git into meanness like they do today."
Bony's brother wanted to know: "Do people sleep?"
Nobody ventured to know, and he accepted the ignorance of all by saying: "A Baptist preacher said that people don't sleep, but that sleep comes to people." Bony's brother resumed his talk with the other fellow.
Bony pointed across the road, between the two knolls. On one had once stood his home. Between the hills there was land laying out, but beyond could be seen a corn patch. Tall graceful corn grew there. "There's fifty acres in that of the best land in this country."
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Bony crossed his leg, showing his dirty ankles. His shirt smelled of long wearing; it was a deeper blue by the dirt, that had become part of the cloth texture. Bony's brother had on new overalls, on the leg of which was still printed in chalk: 38-32. The cuff of each pant-leg had been given several rolls, but still the pants were too long. Bony's brother had had a hair cut, and the hair was so short, it could not be combed.
Bony's brother wanted to know: "I bet he," he indicated a visitor: "I bet he has plenty of cornbread and molasses. Would you give us something, if we are starving to death over here?"
"We could all eat as long as it lasts."
Bony's brother slapped his new overalls, and appeared to be overcome with a kind of good-fellow glee. He said happily. "That's feeling, people. That's feeling! You've got feeling. He's got feeling, people. If people," he said subsiding, "if people didn't have feeling you could cut off a person's hand—" he held out a hand and made a slice at it with the other--- "slice it off like that, and he wouldn't know itl"
Bony said: "When a fellow's hungry, he's going to get out and git something, somehow, before he gets too weak to." Bony filled his pipe.
The visitor decided he would leave, and Bony got up, and went down the
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Alabama 8
steps, and through the weeds to the gate. The dogs jumped up. Bony began to go toward the garden, which looked down on the house. The house was in a V-shaped valley. On one side, at an angle which permitted a leap on the house if you took a good running start, was the garden, on the other side was a field.
Bony and his visitor lifted the chain latch from the gate in the corner of the garden, and climbed up the side of the garden to the com. There they picked corn, and the visitor could look out on the roof of the house, above the fruit trees that huddled it, to the field beyond.
Bony began to pull roast'n'ears, and talk: "I don't aim to try to make another dollar," he grunted at an ear of corn. "I'm just going to hang on to what I got."
Out of the garden, loaded with roast'n'ears, the visitor looked at the greenness which was everywhere, the clean greenness, then at the house, with the green-weed yard, the sleeping dogs, the droves of flies, the dirty men, and he stepped into his car and drove off.
7/19/39 MS.
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