Say they’re gonna get this here fella.”
“They know what he looks like?” Tom asked.
“Well—not exactly—but the way I heard it, they think he got hit.
They think—he’ll have——”
Tom put his hand up slowly and touched his bruised cheek.
Ma cried,
“It ain’t so, what they say!”
“Easy, Ma,” Tom said. “They got it cold.
Anything them drum-corpse fellas say is right if it’s against us.”
Ma peered through the ill light, and she watched Tom’s face, and particularly his lips.
“You promised,” she said.
“Ma, I—maybe this fella oughta go away.
If—this fella done somepin wrong, maybe he’d think,
‘O.K. Le’s get the hangin’ over.
I done wrong an’ I got to take it.’
But this fella didn’ do nothin’ wrong.
He don’ feel no worse’n if he killed a skunk.”
Ruthie broke in,
“Ma, me an’ Winfiel’ knows.
He don’ have to go this-fella’in’ for us.”
Tom chuckled.
“Well, this fella don’ want no hangin’, ’cause he’d do it again.
An’ same time, he don’t aim to bring trouble down on his folks.
Ma—I got to go.”
Ma covered her mouth with her fingers and coughed to clear her throat.
“You can’t,” she said. “They wouldn’ be no way to hide out.
You couldn’ trus’ nobody. But you can trus’ us.
We can hide you, an’ we can see you get to eat while your face gets well.”
“But, Ma——”
She got to her feet.
“You ain’t goin’.
We’re a-takin’ you.
Al, you back the truck against the door.
Now, I got it figgered out.
We’ll put one mattress on the bottom, an’ then Tom gets quick there, an’ we take another mattress an’ sort of fold it so it makes a cave, an’ he’s in the cave; and then we sort of wall it in.
He can breathe out the end, ya see.
Don’t argue.
That’s what we’ll do.”
Pa complained,
“Seems like the man ain’t got no say no more.
She’s jus’ a heller.
Come time we get settled down, I’m a-gonna smack her.”
“Come that time, you can,” said Ma. “Roust up, Al.
It’s dark enough.”
Al went outside to the truck.
He studied the matter and backed up near the steps.
Ma said,
“Quick now.
Git that mattress in!” Pa and Uncle John flung it over the end gate.
“Now that one.”