When the new linoleum was put down three years ago, he had. been the first of the boarders to mount upon it. “Oh,” he said. “Well, I reckon I better ...”
She answered that too, immediately, not unkind.
“I tended to that.
I put everything you left in your grip.
It’s back in my room.
If you want to go up and look for yourself, though?”
“No.
I reckon you got every ...
Well, I reckon I …”
She was watching him.
“You men,” she said. “It ain’t a wonder womenfolks get impatient with you.
You can’t even know your own limits for devilment.
Which ain’t more than I can measure on a pin, at that.
I reckon if it wasn’t for getting some woman mixed up in it to help you, you’d ever one of you be drug hollering into heaven before you was ten years old.”
“I reckon you ain’t got any call to say anything against her,” he said.
“No more I ain’t.
I don’t need to.
Don’t no other woman need to that is going to.
I ain’t saying that it ain’t been women that has done most of the talking.
But if you had more than mansense you would know that women don’t mean anything when they talk.
It’s menfolks that take talking serious.
It ain’t any woman that believes hard against you and her.
Because it ain’t any woman but knows that she ain’t had any reason to have to be bad with you, even discounting that baby.
Or any other man right now.
She never had to.
Ain’t you and that preacher and ever other man that knows about her already done everything for her that she could think to want?
What does she need to be bad for?
Tell me that.”
“Yes,” Byron says.
He was not looking at her now. “I just come …”
She answered that too, before it was spoken.
“I reckon you’ll be leaving us soon.” She was watching him. “What have they done this morning at the courthouse?”
“I don’t know.
They ain’t finished yet.”
“I bound that, too.
They’ll take as much time and trouble and county money as they can cleaning up what us women could have cleaned up in ten minutes Saturday night.
For being such a fool.
Not that Jefferson will miss him.
Can’t get along without him.
But being fool enough to believe that killing a woman will do a man anymore good than killing a man would a woman. ...
I reckon they’ll let the other one go, now.”
“Yessum.
I reckon so.”
“And they believed for a while that he helped do it.
And so they will give him that thousand dollars to show it ain’t any hard feelings.
And then they can get married.
That’s about right, ain’t it?”
“Yessum.” He, could feel her watching him, not unkindly.
“And so I reckon you’ll be leaving us.
I reckon you kind of feel like you have wore out Jefferson, don’t you?”