Floyd said, “I don’t want nobody but your folks to know about it. Jus’ you. An’ I wouldn’t of tol’ you if ya brother didn’ he’p me out here.”
Tom said, “Well, I sure thank ya for tellin’ us. We got to figger it out. Maybe we’ll go.”
Al said, “By God, I think I’ll go if the res’ goes or not. I’ll hitch there.”
“An’ leave the fambly?” Tom asked.
“Sure. I’d come back with my jeans plumb fulla jack. Why not?”
“Ma ain’t gonna like no such thing,” Tom said. “An’ Pa, he ain’t gonna like it neither.”
Floyd set the nuts and screwed them down as far as he could with his fingers. “Me an’ my wife come out with our folks,” he said. “Back home we wouldn’ of thought of goin’ away. Wouldn’ of thought of it. But, hell, we was all up north a piece and I come down here, an’ they moved on, an’ now God knows where they are. Been lookin’ an’ askin’ about ’em ever since.” He fitted his wrench to the enginehead bolts and turned them down evenly, one turn to each nut, around and around the series.
Tom squatted down beside the car and squinted his eyes up the line of tents. A little stubble was beaten into the earth between the tents. “No, sir,” he said, “Ma ain’t gonna like you goin’ off.”
“Well, seems to me a lone fella got more chance of work.”
“Maybe, but Ma ain’t gonna like it at all.”