It's like there was a fellow in every man that's done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.
Peabody.
I said,
"I reckon a man in a tight might let Bill Varner patch him up like a damn mule, but I be damned if the man that'd let Anse Bundren treat him with raw cement aint got more spare legs than I have."
"They just aimed to ease hit some," he said.
"Aimed, hell," I said.
"What in hell did Armstid mean by even letting them put you on that wagon again?"
"Hit was gittin right noticeable," he said.
"We never had time to wait."
I just looked at him.
"Hit never bothered me none," he said.
"Dont you lie there and try to tell me you rode six days on a wagon without springs, with a broken leg and it never bothered you."
"It never bothered me much," he said.
"You mean, it never bothered Anse much," I said.
"No more than it bothered him to throw that poor devil down in the public street and handcuff him like a damn murderer.
Dont tell me.
And dont tell me it aint going to bother you to lose sixty-odd square inches of skin to get that concrete off.
And dont tell me it aint going to bother you to have to limp around on one short leg for the balance of your life—if you walk at all again.
Concrete," I said.
"God Amighty, why didn't Anse carry you to the nearest sawmill and stick your leg in the saw?
That would have cured it.
Then you all could have stuck his head into the saw and cured a whole family . . . Where is Anse, anyway?
What's lie up to now?"
"He's takin back them spades he borrowed," he said.
"That's right," I said.
"Of course he'd have to borrow a spade to bury his wife with. Unless he could borrow a hole in the ground.
Too bad you all didn't put him in it too . . . Does that hurt?"
"Not to speak of," he said, and the sweat big as marbles running down his face and his face about the color of blotting paper.
"Course not," I said.
"About next summer you can hobble around fine on this leg.
Then it wont bother you, not to speak of ... If you had anything you could call luck, you might say it was lucky this is the same leg you broke before," I said.
"Hit's what paw says," he said. MacGowan.
It happened I am back of the prescription case, pouring up some chocolate sauce, when Jody comes back and says,
"Say, Skeet, there's a woman up front that wants to see the doctor and when I said What doctor you want to see, she said she wants to see the doctor that works here and when I said There aint any doctor works here, she just stood there, looking back this way."
"What kind of a woman is it?" I says.
"Tell her to go upstairs to Alford's office."
"Country woman," he says.
"Send her to the courthouse," I says.
"Tell her all the doctors have gone to Memphis to a Barbers' Convention."
"All right," he says, going away.
"She looks pretty good for a country girl," he says.
"Wait," I says.
He waited and I went and peeped through the crack.
But I couldn't tell nothing except she had a good leg against the light.
"Is she young, you say?" I says.
"She looks like a pretty hot mamma, for a country girl," he says.
"Take this," I says, giving him the chocolate.
I took off my apron and went up there.
She looked pretty good.
One of them black eyed ones that look like she'd as soon put a knife in you as not if you two-timed her.