If sickness seizes a person now, unless he belongs to a Bury-league society, he is not counted for a thing. He can die and get buried the best way he can. He may be a member of the church, in good standing, or even a deacon or a deacon’s wife, but unless he joins the Bury-league and keeps his dues all paid up, he gets no attention. The Bury-league sisters and brothers sit up with the worst sinners now and pray over them and listen to all their last words, the same as if they were Christian people. When sinners drop off into their last sleep, they have a store-bought shroud and lie in a fine store-bought box varnished up and painted like a bureau with a glass window in it to show their wicked faces. The Bury-league members don’t care how much the preacher preaches sinners to Hell. They are too brazen to care.
They think about nothing but marching and speaking and singing, and wearing white gloves. Women who are hardly decent put on white waists and black skirts and black sailor hats, and journey round and round people’s graves, saying words that are written in a book. Strange words instead of the words Jesus told people to say. Before the dust settles they put up a fifteen-dollar tombstone with your name on it. And the dues are high. Every time somebody dies you pay an extra tax of fifty cents. People die fast these days too. They don’t wait for plain sickness to cut them down. They run around and find ways to meet sudden death.
He had told Doll all these things as plain as he could. He told her again this morning but instead of listening to him she stuck out her mouth. The way she did made him hot all over and he all but slapped her then, but he didn’t. He just told her to pull in her lip and keep it pulled in. Then, Doll jumped up and said he had better pull in his own. He, Andrew, her lawful husband, and a deacon in the church, too, had to take such slack talk as that from Doll.
Mary turned aside to smile, but she made her voice sound as kind as she could. “It must a been hard for you to take it, Cousin. Mighty hard. All dis you tell me sho makes me surprise. Doll ain’ got de sense I thought e had. Not by a long shot.”
But wait; he hadn’t told her all yet. Doll got so vexed with him she bawled out loud enough for everybody a mile off to hear, and she the wife of a deacon in Heaven’s Gate Church. Then, and he hated to tell this—but Doll cursed him for a stingy old fool.
The words didn’t have a chance to get cold off her tongue before he hauled off and slapped her dumb. No woman has a right to call a man such a thing, even if she is married to him. No woman could call him so and not get her face slapped good and hard, freehanded as he was.
But, Lord, the devil was turned loose then. Words ran out of Doll’s mouth faster than water runs down the gully after rain. She screamed and hollered and carried on until she was too hoarse to whisper. Nobody could stop her or do a thing with her. The more she talked, the more she said.
When she ran into the shed room he paid no heed to her until he heard a strange fuss. He got there just in time to see Doll grab up every bit of the rations and throw them out of the window into the yard. All the grits and meal and bacon, all the rice and sugar and coffee. Every God’s thing he had bought to feed her and the children and himself for a whole week. He had taken some corn all the way down to the end of the Neck to get it ground on a water mill because Doll liked water-ground meal more than meal ground by a steam-engine. God knew he ever had tried to please the woman.
When she finished throwing away all the rations, he thought she would cool down some, but she wasn’t satisfied yet. She ran out in the yard and before he could hinder her, she chopped down all the potato banks with a hoe. Chopped every single bank right in the top where the cornstalks stuck out to let the air in. Then she flew to the woodpile and got the ax and gave the big iron wash-pot one awful lick. The poor thing pure bellowed when the ax hit it, for a great hole broke in its side.
Mary was shocked sure enough now. “De best wash-pot on dis whole place, Cousin. I declare to Gawd I too hate it myself. I was aimin to borrow dat pot de next time I kill a hog. How’s Doll gwine to boil clothes now? How’s e gwine to try out lard?”
Andrew grunted. Doll would never wash any more clothes for him in this world or kill another hog out of his pen, for when she had done all that devilment she left and only God knew where she went. But she could stay right there until Gabriel blew his trumpet for all he cared. He’d never ask her to come back. Never as long as he was in his right mind.
Mary listened, puffing at her pipe now and then, thinking the matter over. Andrew was wrong.
“Mens is different from womens, Cousin, but all o we has two minds, enty?”
Andrew agreed it was so.
“I got two, you
