ROMAN
381
as a string. He was a little cross-eyed, or maybe it was a squint.
Anyway he didn't look right at you. Always reminded me of a
copperhead snake I met in the woods once. It was on an old saw
mill road that ran past a spring.
It
was dry weather and he was
going down there to get him some water. He didn't think anybody
else would be coming along there and when he saw me he stopped
short and reared up his head. I reckon it was about time for him
to shed his skin for his eyes were white looking, like two bubbles
full of smoke. He kept his head straight towards me, but his eyes
walled to the side, like he was looking at me and at the road at the
same time. Roman's eyes went like that. Some folks that are cross–
eyed look sort of comical but Roman never did.
When he first came up here he worked as a farm hand for
anybody who would hire him. He worked some for me when my
crop got in the grass, and at first I was suspicious of him, for he
was a strange nigger. After a while, though, I saw .that he was
smart and close-mouthed and I got him to help me whenever I made
a run.
I had the corn liquor trade in the lower part of Anson County
sewed up. I had just about all the trade in Corinth, and while it is
not a large town, they drink a lot of liquor there. I had a three
hundred gallon still and I had to make two runs a week to supply
the
demand. I usually got about twenty-five or thirty gallons of
liquor from a run of three hundred gallons of corn meal beer, then
I
would double back in the same beer and get about thirty gallons
again. I always made good liquor. It kept me busy looking after
it. I farmed a little on the side, of course, to keep the church folks
from noticing my liquor business too much. I made a lot of money,
but I let on that I was hard up and the Sheriff never bothered me
because I always voted the straight ticket at election time and came
across pretty well when he mentioned the County Campaign fund.
I never did trust banks. I always kept my money hidden back
somewhere on the farm. Most of it I kept in a couple of half-gallon
fruit jars hid under the old log crib. During the year and a half
Roman worked for me I must have stuffed as much as five thousand
dollars in those jars.
He left me one Saturday afternoon. In February, I think it
was. I was going in to Corinth that afternoon and I asked him
if
he wanted to go with me. He said "No" and I paid him the three
dollars I owed him for working that week.
