I DON’T KNOW. THEY SAY HE never was right after his daddy killed hisself. They was just the one boy. The mother had run off, I don’t know where to nor who with. Me and Cecil Edwards was the ones cut him down. He come in the store and told it like you’d tell it was rainin out. We went up there and walked in the barn and I seen his feet hangin. We just cut him down, let him fall in the floor. Just like cuttin down meat. He stood there and watched, never said nothin. He was about nine or ten year old at the time. The old man’s eyes was run out on stems like a crawfish and his tongue blacker’n a chow dog’s. I wisht if a man wanted to hang hisself he’d do it with poison or somethin so folks wouldn’t have to see such a thing as that.
He didn’t look so pretty hisself when Greer got done with him.
No. But I don’t mind honest blood. I’d rather to see that than eyeballs hangin out and such.
I’ll tell ye what old Gresham done when his wife died and how crazy he was. They buried her up here at Sixmile and the preacher he said a few words and then he called on Gresham, ast him did he want to say a few words fore they thowed the dirt over her and old Gresham he stood up, had his hat in his hand and all. Stood up there and sung the chickenshit blues. The chickenshit blues. No, I don’t know the words to it but he did and he sung em ever one fore he set back down again. But he wasn’t a patch on Lester Ballard for crazy.