"See if I dont," she says.
Then I saw that she really was trying to tear it, to tear it right off of her.
By the time I got the car stopped and grabbed her hands there was about a dozen people looking.
It made me so mad for a minute it kind of blinded me.
"You do a thing like that again and I'll make you sorry you ever drew breath," I says.
"I'm sorry now," she says.
She quit, then her eyes turned kind of funny and I says to myself if you cry here in this car, on the street, I'll whip you.
I'll wear you out.
Lucky for her she didn't, so I turned her wrists loose and drove on.
Luckily we were near an alley, where I could turn into the back street and dodge the square.
They were already putting the tent up in Beard's lot.
Earl had already given me the two passes for our show windows.
She sat there with her face turned away, chewing her lip. "I'm sorry now," she says. "I dont see why I was ever born."
"And I know of at least one other person that dont understand all he knows about that," I says.
I stopped in front of the school house.
The bell had rung, and the last of them were just going in. "You're on time for once, anyway," I says. "Are you going in there and stay there, or am I coming with you and make you?" She got out and banged the door. "Remember what I say," I says. "I mean it.
Let me hear one more time that you are slipping up and down back alleys with one of those dam squirts."
She turned back at that.
"I dont slip around," she says. "I dare anybody to know everything I do."
"And they all know it, too," I says. "Everybody in this town knows what you are.
But I wont have it anymore, you hear?
I dont care what you do, myself," I says. "But I've got a position in this town, and I'm not going to have any member of my family going on like a nigger wench.
You hear me?"
"I dont care," she says. "I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I dont care.
I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are."
"If I hear one more time that you haven't been to school, you'll wish you were in hell," I says.
She turned and ran on across the yard. "One more time, remember," I says.
She didn't look back.
I went to the postoffice and got the mail and drove on to the store and parked. Earl looked at me when I came in.
I gave him a chance to say something about my being late, but he just said,
"Those cultivators have come.
You'd better help Uncle Job put them up."
I went on to the back, where old Job was uncrating them, at the rate of about three bolts to the hour.
"You ought to be working for me," I says. "Every other no-count nigger in town eats in my kitchen."
"I works to suit de man whut pays me Sat'dy night," he says. "When I does cat, it dont leave me a whole lot of time to please other folks." He screwed up a nut. "Aint nobody works much in dis country cep de boll-weevil, noways," he says.
"You'd better be glad you're not a boll-weevil waiting on those cultivators," I says. "You'd work yourself to death before they'd be ready to prevent you."
"Dat's de troof," he says. "Boll-weevil got tough time.
Work ev'y day in de week out in de hot sun, rain er shine.
Aint got no front porch to set on en watch de wattermilyuns growin and Sat'dy dont mean nothin a-tall to him."
"Saturday wouldn't mean nothing to you, either," I says, "if it depended on me to pay you wages.
Get those things out of the crates now and drag them inside."
I opened her letter first and took the check out.
Just like a woman.
Six days late.
Yet they try to make men believe that they're capable of conducting a business.
How long would a man that thought the first of the month came on the sixth last in business.
And like as not, when they sent the bank statement out, she would want to know why I never deposited my salary until the sixth.
Things like that never occur to a woman.
"I had no answer to my letter about Quentin's easter dress.
Did it arrive all right?