DARL
Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file. Al-
though I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cotton-
house can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a full head above my
own.
The path runs straight as a plumb-line, worn smooth by feet and baked
brick-hard by July, between the green rows of laid-by cotton, to the cotton-
house in the centre of the field, where it turns and circles the cotton-house at
four soft right angles and goes on across the field again, worn so by feet in
fading precision.
The cotton-house is of rough logs, from between which the chinking has
long fallen. Square, with a broken roof set at a single pitch, it leans in emp-
ty and shimmering dilapidation in the sunlight, a single broad window in
two opposite walls giving on to the approaches of the path. When we reach
it I turn and follow the path which circles the house. Jewel, fifteen feet be-
hind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window.
Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face,
he crosses the floor in four strides with the rigid gravity of a cigar-store In-
dian dressed in patched overalls and endued with life from the hips down,
and steps in a single stride through the opposite window and into the path
again just as I come around the corner. In single file and five feet apart and
Jewel now in front, we go on up the path toward the foot of the bluff.
Tull’s wagon stands beside the spring, hitched to the rail, the reins
wrapped about the seat stanchion. In the wagon-bed are two chairs. Jewel
stops at the spring and takes the gourd from the willow branch and drinks. I
pass him and mount the path, beginning to hear Cash’s saw.
