"I ain't going to start nothing, Benny. I ain't even going to talk about this here farm. Honest--I ain't."
"I've gave the best years of my life to it."
"It's true," she murmured. "Terrible true. And I done it for you, Benny. I wanted to be giving you something. It's all I'd got to give you, Benny. There's many a man, Ben, that's glad of his farm. And grateful, too. There's many that makes it pay."
"And what'll I do if it does pay, maw? What'll I do then?"
"I--I--don't know, Benny. It's only just beginning, now."
"But if it does pay, maw? What'll I do? Go away from here?"
"Naw, Benny--. Not--away--. What'd you go away for, when it pays? After all them years I gave to it?"
His spoon clattered noisily to his plate. He pushed his chair back from the table. The legs of it rasped loudly along the uncarpeted floor. He got to his feet.
"Let's go on outside," he said. "There ain't no sense to this here talking--and talking."
She glanced up at him. Her eyes were narrow and hard.
"All right, Benny. I'll clear up. I'll be along in a minute. All right, Benny."
She sat where she was, the set look pressed on her face. Automatically her hands reached out among the dishes, pulling them toward her.
It was getting dark. There were shadows along the ground. Blue shadows. In the graying skies one star shone brilliantly. Beyond the mist-slurred summit of a hill the full moon grew yellow.
In front of him was the slope of wind-moved corn field, and in the center of it the dim, military figure standing waist deep in the corn.
"Ole--uniform--with--a--stick--into--it."
Still--standing there--still. The same wooden attitude of it. His same, cunning watching of it.
There was a wind. He knew it was going over his face. He could feel the cool of the wind across his moistened lips.
Down there in the shivering corn field, standing in the dark, blue shadows, the dim figure had quivered.
An arm moved--swaying to and fro. The other arm began--swaying--swaying. A tremor ran through it. Once it pivoted. The head shook slowly from side to side. The arms rose and fell--and rose again. The head came up and down and rocked a bit to either side.
"I'm here--" he muttered involuntarily. "Here."
He thought the head faced in his direction.