“Den you send um to me,” Dilsey said. “Tell um de good Lawd dont keer whether he smart er not. Dont nobody but white trash keer dat.”
A street turned oil at right angles, descending, and became a dirt road. On either hand the land dropped more sharply; a broad flat dotted with small cabins whose weathered roofs were on a level with the crown of the road. They were set in small grassless plots littered with broken things, bricks, planks, crockery, things of a once utilitarian value. What growth there was consisted of rank weeds and the trees were mulberries and locusts and sycamores—trees that partook also of the foul desiccation which surrounded the houses; trees whose very burgeoning seemed to be the sad and stubborn remnant of September, as if even spring had passed them by, leaving them to feed upon the rich and unmistakable smell of negroes in which they grew.
From the doors negroes spoke to them as they passed, to Dilsey usually:
“Sis’ Gibson! How you dis mawnin?”
“I’m well. Is you well?”
“I’m right well, I thank you.”
They emerged from the cabins and struggled up the shading levee to the road-men in staid, hard brown or black, with gold watch chains and now and then a stick; young men in cheap violent blues or stripes and swaggering hats; women a little stiffly sibilant, and children in garments bought second hand of white people, who looked at Ben with the covertness of nocturnal animals:
“I bet you wont go up en tech him.”
“How come I wont?”
“I bet you wont. I bet you skeered to.”