A VIEW OF THE WOODS
481
"And I'm a Poland china pig and black is white!" he had
roared after her and he had sat down on a small rock under the
tree, disgusted and furious. This was Pitts's revenge on him.
It
was
as
if
it were
he
that Pitts was driving down the road to beat and
it was as if
he
were the one submitting to it. He had thought at first
that he could stop him by saying that
if
he beat her, he would put
them off the place but when he had tried that, Pitts had said, "Put
me off and you put her off too. Go right ahead. She's mine to whip
and I'll whip her every day of the year if it suits me."
Any time he could make Pitts feel his hand he was determined
to do it and at present he had a little scheme up his sleeve that was
going to be a considerable blow to Pitts. He was thinking of it with
relish when he told Mary Fortune to remember what she wouldn't
get if she didn't mind, and he added, without waiting for an an–
swer, that he might be selling another lot soon and that if he did,
he might give her a bonus but not if she gave him any sass. He had
frequent little verbal tilts with her but this was a sport like putting
a mirror up in front of a rooster and watching him fight his
reflection.
"I don't want no bonus," Mary Fortune said.
"I ain't ever seen you refuse one."
"You ain't ever seen me ask for one neither," she said.
"How much have you laid by?" he asked.
"Noner yer bidnis," she said and stamped his shoulders with
her feet. "Don't be buttin into my bidnis."
"I bet you got it sewed up in your mattress," he said, "just like
an old nigger woman. You ought to put it in the bank. I'm going
to start you an account just as soon as I complete this deal. Won't
anybody be able to check on it but me and you."
The bulldozer moved under them again and drowned out the
rest of what he wanted to say. He waited and when the noise had
passed, he could hold it in no longer. "I'm going to sell the lot right
in front of the house for a gas station," he said. "Then we won't
have to go down the road to get the car filled up, just step out the
front door."
The Fortune house was set back about two hundred feet from
the road and it was this two hundred feet that he intended to sell.
It was the part that his daughter airily called "the lawn" though it
was nothing but a field of weeds.
