Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle LenaStein, Gertrude
General
Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena
Stein, Gertrude
Working class women -- Fiction
depends what way somebody goes to look for new things, the way it
makes it right for them to get excited."
"No Melanctha, I certainly never do say I understand much anybody's
got a right to think they won't have real bad trouble, if they go and
look hard where they are certain sure to find it. No Melanctha, it
certainly does sound very pretty all this talking about danger and
being game and never hollering, and all that way of talking, but when
two men are just fighting, the strong man mostly gets on top with
doing good hard pounding, and the man that's getting all that
pounding, he mostly never likes it so far as I have been able yet to
see it, and I don't see much difference what kind of noble way they
are made of when they ain't got any kind of business to get together
there to be fighting. That certainly is the only way I ever see it
happen right, Melanctha, whenever I happen to be anywhere I can be
looking."
"That's because you never can see anything that ain't just so simple,
Jeff, with everybody, the way you always think it. It do make all
the difference the kind of way anybody is made to do things game Jeff
Campbell."
"Maybe Melanctha, I certainly never say no you ain't right, Melanctha.
I just been telling it to you all straight, Melanctha, the way I
always see it. Perhaps if you run around where you ain't got any
business, and you stand up very straight and say, I am so brave,
nothing can ever ever hurt me, maybe nothing will ever hurt you then
Melanctha. I never have seen it do so. I never can say truly any
differently to you Melanctha, but I always am ready to be learning
from you, Melanctha. And perhaps when somebody cuts into you real
hard, with a brick he is throwing, perhaps you never will do any
hollering then, Melanctha. I certainly don't ever say no, Melanctha,
to you, I only say that ain't the way yet I ever see it happen when I
had a chance to be there looking."
They sat there together, quiet by the fire, and they did not seem to
feel very loving.
"I certainly do wonder," Melanctha said dreamily, at last breaking
into their long unloving silence. "I certainly do wonder why always it
happens to me I care for anybody who ain't no ways good enough for me
ever to be thinking to respect him."
Jeff looked at Melanctha. Jeff got up then and walked a little up and
down the room, and then he came back, and his face was set and dark
and he was very quiet to her.
"Oh dear, Jeff, sure, why you look so solemn now to me. Sure Jeff I
never am meaning anything real by what I just been saying. What was I
just been saying Jeff to you. I only certainly was just thinking how
everything always was just happening to me."
Jeff Campbell sat very still and dark, and made no answer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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