“This yere’s the porest land on earth,” said Tom. “You can’t make five bushels of cawn to the acre. We done put forty dollars’ worth of fertilizer on this yere field, and I’ll bet we don’t get cawn enough to pay for it.”
“The whole farm’s like this yere,” agreed his brother.
“Fact is, I never was cut out for no farmer,” Tom admitted. “I always wanted to be a steamboat man. When we-all got this yere money, my notion was to buy a river boat, and run between Mobile and Selma.”
“Well, I thought we oughter go into the cotton-brokerage business,” said Jackson. “But dad, he wouldn’t hear of it. He likes the swamps, seems like, and he was just bound he’d come and live on his old place.”
“You could grow peanuts on this light soil,” Lockwood suggested. “With the peanuts you could raise hogs.”
“Why, we did get some registered Duroc Jerseys,” said Tom. “But they ain’t doin’ no good. Takes more cawn to feed ’em than they’re worth. Fact is, we ain’t got no hog-proof fences on this place and I reckon it’d take two hundred dollars to put ’em up. It’s more’n it would be worth. Can’t make nothin’ outer this farm. It’s the porest land out yere.”
“It shore is!” Jackson agreed.
It did look like it. Lockwood was amused, however, at this economical spirit in the face of the wild spending that was continually going on; but the explanation was clear.
The Power boys were not “cut out for farmers,” as Tom said. They took no sort of interest in this plantation, a rather discouraging proposition for anybody. They did not need the corn crop; they had more money than they had ever dreamed of possessing.
Previous to getting it they had been desperately poor, but they had never worked hard. From what Louise had told him, from what the boys and old Henry had said, Lockwood was able to picture their life—the three-roomed cabin up the river, a little corn planting, hunting, fishing, drink, and gambling—a reckless, squalid, perhaps lawless existence. No wonder Louise had wished to escape from it; the marvel was that she had succeeded so well.