The girl’s eyes blazed with resentment, but she was silent.
Uncle John pushed his rusty nail deep into the ground with his broad thumb.
“I got to tell,” he said.
Pa said,
“Well, tell then, goddamn it!
Who’d ya kill?”
Uncle John dug with his thumb into the watch pocket of his blue jeans and scooped out a folded dirty bill.
He spread it out and showed it.
“Fi’ dollars,” he said.
“Steal her?” Pa asked.
“No, I had her.
Kept her out.”
“She was yourn, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t have no right to keep her out.”
“I don’t see much sin in that,” Ma said. “It’s yourn.”
Uncle John said slowly,
“It ain’t only the keepin’ her out.
I kep’ her out to get drunk.
I knowed they was gonna come a time when I got to get drunk, when I’d get to hurtin’ inside so I got to get drunk.
Figgered time wasn’ yet, an’ then—the preacher went an’ give ’imself up to save Tom.”
Pa nodded his head up and down and cocked his head to hear.
Ruthie moved closer, like a puppy, crawling on her elbows, and Winfield followed her.
Rose of Sharon dug at a deep eye in a potato with the point of her knife.
The evening light deepened and became more blue.
Ma said, in a sharp matter-of-fact tone,
“I don’ see why him savin’ Tom got to get you drunk.”
John said sadly, “Can’t say her. I feel awful. He done her so easy.
Jus’ stepped up there an’ says,
‘I done her.’
An’ they took ’im away.
An’ I’m a-gonna get drunk.”
Pa still nodded his head.
“I don’t see why you got to tell,” he said.
“If it was me, I’d jus’ go off an’ get drunk if I had to.”
“Come a time when I could a did somepin an’ took the big sin off my soul,” Uncle John said sadly.
“An’ I slipped up. I didn’ jump on her, an’—an’ she got away. Lookie!” he said.
“You got the money.
Gimme two dollars.”
Pa reached reluctantly into his pocket and brought out the leather pouch.
“You ain’t gonna need no seven dollars to get drunk.
You don’t need to drink champagny water.”
Uncle John held out his bill.
“You take this here an’ gimme two dollars.
I can get good an’ drunk for two dollars. I don’ want no sin of waste on me.
I’ll spend whatever I got.
Always do.”
Pa took the dirty bill and gave Uncle John two silver dollars.
“There ya are,” he said. “A fella got to do what he got to do.
Nobody don’ know enough to tell ’im.”
Uncle John took the coins.