Her speech was pleasant enough, but she kept walking straight on to her gate. They scrambled a noisy “good evenin'” and left their mouths setting open and their ears full of hope. When she got to where they were she turned her face on the bander log and spoke. “What she doin coming back here in dem overhalls? Can’t she find no dress to put on? – Where’s dat blue satin dress she left here in? – Where all dat money her husband took and died and left her? – What dat ole forty year ole ‘oman doin’ wid her hair swingin' down her back lak some young gal? Where she left dat young lad of a boy she went off here wid? – Thought she was going to marry? – Where he left her? – What he done wid all her money? – Betcha he off wid some gal so young she ain’t even got no hairs – why she don’t stay in her class?” A mood come alive, Words walking without masters walking altogether like harmony in a song. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. They passed nations through their mouths. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. The people all saw her come because it was sundown. She had come back from the sodden and the bloated the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the pillow and the feet. So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead.
Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time.
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
Excerpt from Their Eyes Were Watching God
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