Shug had slumped into the one comfortable chair in the room. Turning his head, he glared at his daughter.
“You air not goin’ to work in no turkentime orchard,” he rasped. “You air goin’ to stay right here an’ he’p yore pore maw an’ me. I told you oncet to shet up!”
It struck Selina Jo suddenly that life was, somehow, terribly one-sided and unfair. Other girls in the community, who didn’t work as hard as she did, were beginning to wear gingham dresses for Sunday. She thought bitterly that in return for her slaving she had received bed and board—nothing more. By everything that was right, she reasoned, she had earned at least one store-bought dress. Yet it was roughly denied her. Some of the thoughts which had been haunting her for months struggled for expression. Her soul cried out against what was a patent injustice. But she managed to speak calmly.
“Fer as I kin figger it out, Paw,” she said, “I been doin’ my sheer o’ keepin’ this here fambly up. I broke them last yoke o’ steers, an’ one of ’em you was afeared to tech. I’ve split rails an’ laid fences; I’ve broke new ground. An’ the fu’st time I ast fer anything you say I cain’t have it.”
She ceased speaking for a moment, but her steady gaze never left Shug’s face.
“Now, I’m goin’ to work fer Pruitt,” she continued slowly, “till I git me the money I need.”
Something must have occurred during Shug’s recent trip—probably a hurried flight from officers—to increase his normal perverseness. He had risen from his chair. Taking a heavy leather strap from the wall, he started toward Selina Jo.
“You air, huh?” Advancing, he fondled the strap suggestively. “You’ll git a larrupin’, that’s what!”
With the first evidence of her father’s intention, Selina Jo’s face had flushed a brick-red. Now it paled suddenly. She had not even been threatened with corporal punishment for years. Wild rebellion surged within her. A carving knife lay upon the rude deal table beside which she was standing. One slim, brown hand dropped down beside the knife. Her emotion visible only in the tumultuous heaving of her breast and the white, set expression of her face, she waited, motionless, her dark, sombre eyes gazing unwaveringly into Shug’s face.
“Paw,” she said evenly, “just you tech me oncet with that strop an’, as shore as God gives me stren’th, I’ll cut yore heart out.”