382
PARTISAN REVIEW
He put .the money in his overall pocket. He said: "Mister
George, I reckon I better tell you. I won't be here to work Monday
morning."
I thought he meant that he wanted to be off Monday. "That's
all right," I told him, "we won't make another run before Tuesday
any way. I can get up the wood on Monday by myself."
He looked at me, only he wasn't looking at me, the way he did.
"It ain't that," he said.
I started figuring. I hadn't paid him much for helping me.
Usually I paid him fifty cents a day and his board and sometimes
I gave him half a gallon of com liquor. I never saw him when he'd
been drinking so I always wondered if he sold that. Still I never
saw him around with other niggers much. That was the thing I
liked about him. I couldn't pick up another nigger as close-mouthed
as Roman around Corinth. I thought I'd better come up on his
wages.
"If
it's the money worrying you," I told him, "we can
straighten that out."
He shook his head. "It ain't anything wrong," he said. "I'm
just in a notion to leave. I won't be back," he said, and when I got
back that night he was gone.
I heard in Corinth that he told it that he was going to Old
Man White's place and make a crop but if he said that he was a
damned lie.
He went to Old Man White's place all right, but he never
farmed a lick. He started making liquor with a tin tub outfit and
he made the sorriest and rawest liquor I ever tasted in my life. But
he could make it cheap that way and in a little while he was under·
selling me. After that he broadened out; in the end he took most of
my trade away from me. I didn't like that but there wasn't
any·
thing I could do about it. I never did say anything about it nor let
on that it mattered one way or the other to me. I could have made
my liquor the way Roman made his, but that wasn't my way. I
don't make any filthy liquor.
If
the people who drink it want sorry
stuff that's their business. But they'll have to buy it from some–
body else besides me.
I was the dealer. I shuffied them good and Roman cut. I
dealt him the King of Hearts and myself the King of Spades. The
