“When did you git so pa’ticular, Sherry? You must be kissed you’ elbow an’ turned to a lady, enty?” April sneered coolly.
“No matter how long you cook a’ eel, it’ll turn raw soon’s it gits cold.”
“Who’d let a eel git cold? Not me, I know,” April returned hotly. “Eels ain’ nothin’ but he catfish. How come you love catfish so good an’ scorns eels?”
“Sho’ dey is!” Uncle Bill affirmed promptly. “Dey’s de men catfish. Sho’! Anybody’ll tell you dat.” April shoved his boat forward.
“Well, I’m glad you don’ want ’em, Sherry! It would be too bad if you did. But I tell you, when Big Sue gits dem seasoned up right in a pot dey would make you pure bite you’ fingers just to smell ’em.”
Sherry said no more, and April’s boat glided on. A bend in the stream closed its gate behind it, shutting him and his boatload of food out of sight.
Uncle Bill took a chew of tobacco. “April’s de luckiest man I ever seen,” he ventured, but Sherry said nothing at all.
Through breaks in the trees Breeze caught glimpses of drab, level, water-covered spaces. Old rice-fields. Deserted. Marsh-grown. They lacked the color and the look of life that filled the thick-tangled growth of trees and thorny-looking vines and bushes encircling them.
“Sherry,” Uncle Bill rested his paddle, “you don’ hold nothin’ against April, does you?”
Sherry’s answer was slow coming, “Not nothin’ much, suh.”