"It aint respectful, talking that way about her grave," pa says.
"You all dont know what it is.
You never pure loved her, none of you."
Jewel does not answer.
He sits a little stiffly erect, his body arched away from his shirt.
His high-colored jaw juts.
Dewey Dell returns.
We watch her emerge from the bushes, carrying the package, and climb into the wagon.
She now wears her Sunday dress, her beads, her shoes and stockings.
"I thought I told you to leave them clothes to home," pa says.
She does not answer, does not look at us.
She sets the package in the wagon and gets in.
The wagon moves on.
"How many more hills now, Darl?" Vardaman says.
"Just one," I say.
"The next one goes right up into town."
This hill is red sand, bordered on either hand by negro cabins; against the sky ahead the massed telephone lines run, and the clock on the courthouse lifts among the trees.
In the sand the wheels whisper, as though the very earth would hush our entry.
We descend as the hill commences to rise.
We follow the wagon, the whispering wheels, passing the cabins where faces come suddenly to the doors, white-eyed.
We hear sudden voices, ejaculant.
Jewel has been looking from side to side; now his head turns forward and I can see his ears taking on a still deeper tone of furious red.
Three negroes walk beside the road ahead of us; ten feet ahead of them a white man walks.
When we pass the negroes their heads turn suddenly with that expression of shock and instinctive outrage.
"Great God," one says; "what they got in that wagon?"
Jewel whirls. "Son of a bitches," he says.
As he does so he is abreast of the white man, who has paused.
It is as though Jewel had gone blind for the moment, for it is the white man toward whom he whirls.
"Darl!" Cash says from the wagon.
I grasp at Jewel.
The white man has fallen back a pace, his face still slack-jawed; then his jaw tightens, claps to.
Jewel leans above him, his jaw muscles gone white.
"What did you say?" he says.
"Here," I say.
"He dont mean anything, mister.
Jewel," I say.
When I touch him he swings at the man.
I grasp his arm; we struggle.
Jewel has never looked at me.
He is trying to free his arm.
When I see the man again he has an open knife in his hand.
"Hold up, mister," I say;
"I've got him.
Jewel," I say.
“Thinks because he's a goddamn town fellow," Jewel says, panting, wrenching at me.
"Son of a bitch," he says.
The man moves.
He begins to edge around me, watching Jewel, the knife low against his flank.
"Cant no man call me that," he says.
Pa has got down, and Dewey Dell is holding Jewel, pushing at him.