"She too hard ears," Sissie declared, "she won't lissen to she pappy,
she too hard ears."
* * * * *
Dusk came. Country folk, tired, soggy, sleepy, staggering in from
"town"--depressed by the market quotations on Bantam cocks--hollowed
howdy-do to Coggins, on the stone step, waiting.
Rufus and Ada strangely forgot to go down to the hydrant to bathe their
feet. It had been a passion with Coggins. "Nasty feet breed disease,"
he had said, "you Mistah Rufus, wash yo' foots befo' yo' go to sleep.
An' yo', too, Miss Ada, I'm speaking to yo', gal, yo' hear me? Tak' yo'
mout' off o' go 'head, befo' Ah box it off...."
Inwardly glad of the escape, Ada and Rufus sat, not by Coggins out
on the stone step, but down below the cabin, on the edge of a stone
overlooking an empty pond, pitching rocks at the frogs and crickets
screaming in the early dusk.
The freckled-face old buckra physician paused before the light and held
up something to it....
"Marl ... marl ... dust...."
It came to Coggins in swirls. Autopsy. Noise comes in swirls. Pounding,
pounding--dry Indian corn pounding. Ginger. Ginger being pounded in a
mortar with a bright, new pestle. Pound, pound. And. Sawing. Butcher
shop. Cow foot is sawed that way. Stew--or tough hard steak. Then the
drilling--drilling--drilling to a stone cutter's ears! Ox grizzle.
Drilling into ox grizzle....
"Too bad, Coggins," the doctor said, "too bad, to lose yo' dawtah...."
In a haze it came to Coggins. Inertia swept over him. He saw the old
duffer climb into his buggy, tug at the reins of his sickly old nag and
slowly drive down the rocky gap and disappear into the night.
Inside, Sissie, curious, held things up to the light. "Come," she said
to Coggins, "and see what 'im take out a' ar. Come an' see de marl...."
And Coggins slowly answered, "Sissie--if yo' know what is good fo'
yo'self, you bes' leave dem stones alone."