We, my pa and my ma and my sister Mandy, stayed there a
long time. Then Mister Moore sold off a little here and a little there
and we moved up on the mountain with my sister and her husband, Peter
Doss, where my ma died. Then I went down to Mister Oscar Moore's
place--he was my Missey' boy."
"Yes mam, I did have a wife. I had a mos' worrysome time. It is a
worrysome time when a man comes to takes your wife right away from you.
No'm, I don't ever want her to come back."
"Yes'm, I do my own cooking, and I've put up some fruit. I have a little
mite of meat, a little mite of taters, a little mite of beans and peas.
I get a little pension too."
"These darkies today nearly all get wild. You can't tell What they are
going to do tomorrow. They's jes like everybody--some awful good and
some awful bad."
And in the tiny one room shack, of logs and tin, no window, a swing door
held by a leather strap, "Gate-eye" does his cooking on a small wood
stove. A long bench holds a lantern with a shingly clean globe, a lot of
canned fruit, dried beans and peas. The bed is a series of old bed
springs. But "Gate-eye" just belongs to the neighborhood, and every one
feels kindly toward him.
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