"I told you my first husband got killed. The mule run away with his
plow and throwed him a summerset. His head was where his heels should
have been, he said, and the mule dragged him. His chest was crushed,
and mashed. His face was cut and dirtied. He lived nine days and a
half after he was hurt and couldn't eat one grain of rice. I never
left his bedside 'cept to cook a little broth for him. That's all he
would eat--just a little broth.
"He said to his friend, 'See this little woman of mine? I hate to
leave her. She's just such a good little woman. She ain't got no
business in this world without a husband.'
"And his friend said to him, 'Well, you might as well make up your
mind you got to leave her, 'cause you goin' to do it.'
"He got hurt on Thursday and I couldn't git a doctor till Friday. Dr.
Harper, the plantation doctor, had got his house burned and his hands
hurt. So he couldn't come out to help us. Finally Dr. Hodges come. He
come from Sunnyside, Mississippi, and he charge me fourteen dollars.
He just made two trips and he didn't do nothin'.
"Bowls and pitchers were in style then. And I always kept a pitcher of
clean water in the house. I looked up and there was a bunch of men
comin' in the house. It was near dark then. They brought Sampson in
and carried him to the bed and put him down. I said, 'What's the
matter with Frank?' And they said, 'The mule drug him.' And they put
him on the bed and went on out. I dipped a handkerchief in the water
and wet it and put it in his mouth and took out great gobs of dust
where the mule had drug him in the dirt. They didn't nobody help me
with him then; I was there alone with him.
"I started to go for the doctor but he called me back and said it
wasn't no use for me to go. Couldn't git the doctor then, and if I
could, he'd charge too much and wouldn't be able to help him none
nohow. So we wasn't able to git the doctor till the next day, and then
it wasn't the plantation doctor. We had planted fifteen acres in
cotton, and we had ordered five hundred pounds of meat for our winter
supply and laid it up. But Frank never got to eat none of it. They
sent three or four hands over to git their meals with me, and they et
up all the meat and all the other supplies we had. I didn't want it.
It wasn't no use to me when Frank was gone. After they paid the
doctor's bill and took out for the supplies we was supposed to git,
they handed me thirty-three dollars and thirty-five cents. That was
all I got out of fifteen acres of cotton.