Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“Oh yes, I heard tell about him. Big banker, big rich. Lives in the biggest house in town with a hired cook and a man to wait on the table for jest him and that daughter is it that makes out she’s deaf.”

“She is deaf. She was in the war. A cannon broke her eardrums.”

“So she claims.” The Negro didn’t answer. He was sitting in the room’s—possibly the house’s—one rocking chair, not moving anyway. But now something beyond just stillness had come over him: an immobility, almost like held breath. Mink’s back was to the fire, the light, so his face was invisible; his voice anyway had not altered. “A woman in a war. She must have ever body fooled good. I’ve knowed them like that myself. She jest makes claims and ever body around is too polite to call her a liar. Likely she can hear ever bit as good as you and me.”

Now the Negro spoke, quite sternly. “Whoever it was told you she is fooling is the one that’s lying. There are folks in more places than right there in Jefferson that know the truth about her whether the word has got up to that Vetrun Hospital where you claim you was at or not. If I was you, I don’t believe I would dispute it. Or leastways I would be careful who I disputed it to.”

“Sho, sho,” Mink said. “You Jefferson folks ought to know. You mean, she can’t hear nothing? You could walk right up behind her, say, into the same room even, and she wouldn’t know it?”

“Yes,” the Negro said. The twelve-year-old girl now stood in the kitchen door. “She’s deaf. You dont need to dispute it. The Lord touched her, like He touches a heap of folks better than you, better than me. Dont worry about that.”

“Well, well,” Mink said. “Sho, now. Your supper’s ready.” The Negro got up.

“What you going to do tonight?” he said. “I aint got room for you.

“I dont need none,” Mink said. “That doctor said for me to get all the fresh air I can. If you got a extry quilt, I’ll sleep in the cotton truck and be ready for a early start back in that patch tomorrow.”

The cotton which half-filled the bed of the pickup truck had been covered for the night with a tarpaulin, so he didn’t even need the quilt. He was quite comfortable. But mainly he was off the ground. That was the danger, what a man had to watch against: once you laid flat on the ground, right away the earth started in to draw you back down into it. The very moment you were born out of your mother’s body, the power and drag of the earth was already at work on you; if there had not been other womenfolks in the family or neighbors or even a hired one to support you, hold you up, keep the earth from touching you, you would not live an hour. And you knew it too. As soon as you could move you would raise your head even though that was all, trying to break that pull, trying to pull erect on chairs and things even when you still couldn’t stand, to get away from the earth, save yourself. Then you could stand alone and take a step or two but even then during those first few years you still spent half of them on the ground, the old patient biding ground saying to you, “It’s all right, it was just a fall, it dont hurt, dont be afraid.” Then you are a man grown, strong, at your peak; now and then you can deliberately risk laying down on it in the woods hunting at night; you are too far from home to get back so you can even risk sleeping the rest of the night on it. Of course you will try to find something, anything—a plank, boards, a log, even brush tops—something, anything to intervene between your unconsciousness, helplessness, and the old patient ground that can afford to wait because it’s going to get you someday, except that there aint any use in giving you a full mile just because you dared an inch. And you know it; being young and strong you will risk one night on it but even you wont risk two nights in a row. Because even, say you take out in the field for noon and set under a tree or a hedgerow and eat your lunch and then lay down and you take a short nap and wake up and for a minute you dont even know where you are, for the good reason that you aint all there; even in that short time while you wasn’t watching, the old patient biding unhurried ground has already taken that first light holt on you, only you managed to wake up in time. So, if he had had to, he would have risked sleeping on the ground this last one night. But he had not had to chance it. It was as if Old Moster Himself had said, “I aint going to help you none but I aint going to downright hinder you neither.”

Then it was dawn, daybreak. He ate again, in solitude; when the sun rose they were in the cotton again; during these benisoned harvest days between summer’s dew and fall’s first frost the cotton was moisture-free for picking as soon as you could see it; until noon. “There,” he told the Negro. “That ought to holp you out a little. You got a good bale for that Jefferson gin now so I reckon I’ll get on down the road while I can get a ride for a change.”