"Looky here, Judy, my gal."
Jabez opened the oven door, which had lost its handle and had to be operated by means of a pair of pliers, and drew toward the front of the oven two large sizzling pans, one on the oven floor, the other above it on the grating. As she looked at these pans and sniffed the appetizing smell that steamed up from them, Judith felt once more creeping over her body the same soft, pleasurable, almost erotic sensation and her lips fell again into that smile which might have answered a lover's kiss. In each pan was a large, upcurving mass, delicately brown, casting up a savory steam and oozing succulent juices into the rich, bubbling gravy beneath. With a big tin spoon Jabez lifted this steaming essence from the bottom of the pan and poured it over the big brown mounds. Some of it penetrated into the meat; some trickled appetizingly down the sides and back into the gravy pool.
"Is it near done, Uncle Jabez?"
There was a strained tenseness in the question.
"You damn betcha. We'll be a-lightin' into it afore ten minutes is past. The Bible says the full belly loathes the honeycomb; but to the hungry every bitter thing is sweet. So I reckon them two hind quarters'll slide daown kinder easy."
Uncle Jonah Cobb, who had been pacing up and down the floor, stopped at the arresting word honey and looked disappointed when nothing further was said about it.
"They don't do good 'ithout salt," he mumbled to himself, continuing his walk.
Corn cakes were frying on the top of the stove. The big table, roughly made of unplaned pine boards, was drawn into the middle of the room; and Jabez had unearthed from somewhere a tablecloth that had once been white. It was yellowed from long lying away and much creased and crumpled. But it was a tablecloth, and as such suggestive of feasts and holidays. With a strange assortment of broken handled knives and forks and cracked and crazed plates, the table was set for eight.
The overpowering aroma, acting upon the intensity of her craving appetite, affected Judith like a drug which makes the near and real seem vague and far away. She had afterwards a dim recollection of people moving restlessly about, striding up and down the floor and asking if it was time to sit down. But she hardly realized what was going on about her until she found herself seated at the table. Silently as if they had sprung out of the earth, Uncle Jonah and Aunt Selina were found sitting opposite her. Uncle Sam Whitmarsh was at her right hand and Jerry at her left. Her father and Uncle Amos Crupper were at the other end of the table.
Jabez brought one of the big roasting pans and setting it down at his end of the table on top of a piece of pine board began to carve. It must have been that all the others seated there felt like herself; for they seemed rapt and taken out of themselves as though they were religious devotees assisting at some sacred rite. There was a tense look in every face and every eye gleamed and glittered. Judith thought she had never seen such a light in any eyes before. She had seen the light of love, of anger, of jealousy shining from people's eyes. But such expressions were weak and volatile compared with this. It was a look that expressed something more basic than anger, more enduring than love, more all-compelling than jealousy. The eyes were all fixed steadily upon one object, the roasting pan at Jabez' end of the table. The silence was tense with ravenous expectancy.