Jim once tol' me he had a son 'round 'bout my age, an' I thought it were funny since I had a pap 'bout his age too, maybe a bit older but old people, I think really they're all the same age.
That night Buck got kilt I were real sad, sad to make a body hurt blamed lots, an' he says to me, "Woss wron, honey?" and I had to tell him. He said it were good to cry for dead folk, that it helped them spirits git to where they's goin', an' so I did. Right on into his shirt 'til I didn' know nothin' else, but he didn' seem to care none even though I reckon I made his shirt real clean, an' I's sorry for that.
But when I woke up the next mornin' I thoughts to myself, who held Jim ever? When he got beat, when he got sold away from his fam'ly, when he were sad? I reckon I don't rightly now, reckon I won' never ask.
But nowadays when I wake up in the mornins I feel better than I ever done, no starchy clothes nor welts on me nowhere nuther, an' whenever I see Jim with his pole gettin' us closer to freedom, I thinks to myself don' no one deserve it more'n him, they's the very thoughts I think an' you can tell Widow Douglas, pap, the whole town'a St. Petersburg if'n that's your fancy a'cause I done made up my mind not to be 'shamed 'a my own reck'nin no more.