“Good God A’mighty, man! Whar you come from?” was her startled exclamation at beholding him.
“F’om home, Aunt Tildy; w’ere else do you expec’?” replied Ozème, dismounting composedly.
He had not seen the old woman for several years—since she was cooking in town for the family with which he boarded at the time.[time.] She had washed and ironed for him, atrociously, it is true, but her intentions were beyond reproach if her washing was not. She had also been clumsily attentive to him during a spell of illness. He had paid her with an occasional bandana, a calico dress, or a checked apron, and they had always considered the account between themselves square, with no sentimental feeling of gratitude remaining on either side.
“I like to know,” remarked Ozème, as he took the gray mare from the shafts, and led her up to the trough where the mule was—“I like to know w’at you mean by makin’ a crop like that an’ then lettin’ it go to was’e? Who you reckon’s goin’ to pick that cotton? You think maybe the angels goin’ to come down an’ pick it fo’ you, an’ gin it an’ press it, an’ then give you ten cents a poun’ fo’ it, hein?”
“Ef de Lord don’ pick it, I don’ know who gwine pick it, Mista Ozème. I tell you, me an’ Sandy we wuk dat crap day in an’ day out; it’s him done de mos’ of it.”
“Sandy? That little—”
“He ain’ dat li’le Sandy no mo’ w’at you rec’lec’s; he ’mos’ a man, an’ he wuk like a man now. He wuk mo’ ’an fittin’ fo’ his strenk, an’ now he layin’ in dah sick—God A’mighty knows how sick. An’ me wid a risin’ twell I bleeged to walk de flo’ o’ nights, an’ don’ know ef I ain’ gwine to lose de han’ atter all.”
“W’y, in the name o’ conscience, you don’ hire somebody to pick?”
“Whar I got money to hire? An’ you knows well as me ev’y chick an’ chile is pickin’ roun’ on de plantations an’ gittin’ good pay.”
The whole outlook appeared to Ozème very depressing, and even menacing, to his personal comfort and peace of mind. He foresaw no prospect of dinner unless he should cook it himself. And there was that Sandy—he remembered well the little scamp of eight, always at his grandmother’s heels when she was cooking or washing. Of course he would have to go in and look at the boy, and no doubt dive into his traveling-bag for quinine, without which he never traveled.