Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered

192/260“Ah ain’t mad wid her for whut she done, ’cause she ain’t done menothin’ yet. Ah’m mad at her for thinkin’. Her and her gang got tuhgo.”“Us is wid yuh, Tea Cake. You know dat already. Dat Turner womanis real smart, accordin’ tuh her notions. Reckon she done heard’bout dat money yo’ wife got in de bank and she’s bound tuh rope herin tuh her family one way or another.”“Sop, Ah don’t think it’s half de money as it is de looks. She’s colorstruck.She ain’t got de kind of uh mind you meet every day. She ain’t afact and neither do she make a good story when you tell about her.”“Ah yeah, she’s too smart tuh stay round heah. She figgers we’sejus’ uh bunch uh dumb niggers so she think she’ll grow horns. Butdat’s uh lie. She’ll die butt-headed.”Saturday afternoon when the work tickets were turned into casheverybody began to buy coon-dick and get drunk. By dusk dark BelleGlade was full of loud-talking, staggering men. Plenty women had gottentheir knots charged too. The police chief in his speedy Ford wasrushing from jook to jook and eating house trying to keep order, butmaking few arrests. Not enough jail-space for all the drunks so whybother with a few? All he could do to keep down fights and get thewhite men out of colored town by nine o’clock. Dick Sterrett and Coodemayseemed to be the worst off. Their likker told them to go fromplace to place pushing and shoving and loud-talking and they were doingit.Way after a while they arrived at Mrs. Turner’s eating house andfound the place full to the limit. Tea Cake, Stew Beef, Sop-de-Bottom,Bootyny, Motor Boat and all the familiar crowd was there. Coodemay