Some day Ah’m goin’ tuh drop dead from some of yo’ foolishness. “If you such a big fool dat you got to have a fit over a earth worm or a string, Ah don’t keer how bad Ah skeer you.” “Course Ah knowed it! That’s how come Ah done it.” He slapped his leg with his hand and almost rolled on the ground in his mirth. “Sykes, what you throw dat whip on me like dat? You know it would skeer me–looks just like a snake, an’ you knows how skeered Ah is of snakes.” She lifted her eyes to the door and saw him standing there bent over with laughter at her fright.
Then she saw that it was the big bull whip her husband liked to carry when he drove. It softened her knees and dried her mouth so that it was a full minute before she could cry out or move. Just then something long, round, limp and black fell upon her shoulders and slithered to the floor beside her. She squatted in the kitchen floor beside the great pile of clothes, sorting them into small heaps according to color, and humming a song in a mournful key, but wondering through it all where Sykes, her husband, had gone with her horse and buckboard. It was so much neater than a number of bundles lying around. A great hamper in the bedroom held the clothes that she brought home. Sunday night after church, she sorted them and put the white things to soak. So she collected the soiled clothes on Saturday when she returned the clean things. But she was a wash-woman, and Monday morning meant a great deal to her. Any other night, Delia Jones would have been in bed for two hours by this time. It was eleven o’clock of a Spring night in Florida.
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