“Can you tell me how far it is to Whispering Leaves?”
At this he turned and looked back at me over his shoulder. “I reckon hit’s sum un like ten miles, or mebbe hit’s gwine on twelve,” he responded.
“When did you leave there?”
Again there was a long silence while we jogged sleepily out of the deeply shaded streets of the little village. “I ain’ been dar dis mawnin’, Miss Effie,” he answered at last.
“Why, I thought you lived there?”
I was so accustomed by this time to the slowness of his responses that I waited patiently until he brought out with hesitation, “I use’ ter.”
“Then you are no longer the family coachman?”
He shook his head above the bandanna handkerchief, and I could see his deep perplexity written in the brown creases of his neck. “Yas’m. I’se still de driver.”
“But how can you be if you don’t live on the place?”
“One er dem w’ite sarvants brungs de car’ige down ter de creek, en I tecks en drives hit along de road,” he replied. “I goes dar in de daytime,” he added impressively after a minute. “Dar’s some un um ain’ never set foot dar sence we all moved off, but I ain’ skeered er nuttin’, sweet Jesus, in de daytime.”