"
"It's enough to turn anybody's hair."
"Me and you might have made a mistake-mainly me. Maybe we
should've reported Ward's whiskey still before we did. Maybe he
wouldn't be dead today, if we had. Maybe it's a blessing he is
dead. I don't know. When I think of that stillborn baby, I- Damn
my tongue! Jodie, forget I mentioned a baby! My tongue slipped! I
gave my word not to-"
"I already knew about the baby-Nannie and me. And we're not
aiming to talk it. 'Twouldn't help Wes's daughter, nor nobody."
"That's the truth! Jodie, I don't know how you look at it,
but as I see it, it's best now to let Ward's folks bury him and
not stir up a ruckus over the technicalities of just how he died.
Far as I'm concerned, it don't make a continental how the gun
went off. It's not the how of death that's of any consequence.
It's death. If there was ever anything any 'count in Ward
Lawson-and there must've been at some time; nobody's worthless
all their livelong life-it died a good while back. When, I don't
know. But it wasn't Sunday at sundown when that lead ripped
through his jugular vein!"
Papa and the doctor walked on through the gate into the grove
of trees in front of Miss Ophelia's house, where the dozen or
more buggies and wagons and saddle horses were waiting.
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