“I’d orter been hided. Me an’ Trax together.”

Matt rose from the table and gathered up the few dishes. She stopped in the act. She looked at her hands as though their knotty strength were strange to her.

“Snatchin’ off a young un’s rations . . .”

She leaned heavily on the table. Emptiness filled the house.

She strode abruptly out the door and through the hammock to the pines. The moon had swung toward its setting and the rays lay long under the trees. The girl lay crouched against a broad mottled trunk.

Matt said, “You kin come on back.”

The emaciated figure wavered from the ground on spindling legs. It tried to crowd close to the warmth of the woman’s body. As they moved toward the house, the girl stumbled in the run-over slippers.

Matt said, “Here. Gimme them crazy shoes.”

Elly stooped and took them from her bare feet. The woman put them in her apron pockets. She went ahead of the girl into the front room and bent down to kindle a fire.

Alligators

Bless Katy, I don’t know nothing about alligators. You belong to talk to some of them real old-timey Florida ’gator hunters that has messed up with ’em deliberate. I don’t never mess up with no alligator. If so chance me and one meets, it’s just because he comes up with me—I don’t never try to come up with him. There ain’t never been but once when me and a alligator met more than accidental.

’Gators is a mess. And a pain. I run over one last night. I’d been out to Lobkirk’s for a snort, and coming back by Gopher Creek I saw the knocker climbing out of the ditch to cross the road to water. I shot the juice to the Model-T and I hit him just the time he got his head over the rut. When he rared up, he carried the front wheels of the car plumb over in the ditch. The Model-T shook loose, but before it got shut of him, he had me going in the creek. I don’t fancy ’em.

I don’t much mind handling a small un. Partickler if it’s to torment somebody is worse scairt of ’em than me. Like Br’er Cresey. He hates a varmint or a snake or a ’gator the most of any man I know. I don’t never get my hands on a little alligator but I goes to studying: Where can I put him so’s Br’er Cresey will get the most good of him? Cresey’ll holler like a woman if you catch him just right. A while ago, me and Raymond caught him just right in the post office.