How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I told you no questions Janey, just answers," I said. "We don't have time for both of us to ask questions. I ask questions, you answer them. Now, who do you know don't like Fix?"
"I don't like him," Bea said. "Why we ever let that kind on this land, I don't know. The land has not been the same since they brought those tractors here."
"Beatrice, please shut up," I said. Please. Please, Beatrice" (3.100-2)
There's Miss Bea with her upper-class snootiness again—but that's not all. The "tractors" that she's talking about are one of our first glimpses of progress in the novel, and their arrival just so happens to be connected to the Marshall family's shrinking wealth.
Quote #2
We still had cane, tall and blue-green, on both sides of the road. Morgan on the left, Marshall on the right. But it wasn't Marshall cane anymore. Beau Boutan was leasing the plantation from the Marshall family. Beau and his family had been leasing the land the past twenty-five, thirty years. The very same land we worked, our people had worked, our people's people had worked since the time of slavery. Now Mr. Beau had it all. Or, should I say, he had it all up to about twelve o'clock that day. (6.7)
Whoa—what a burn. We suppose it's a good thing none of the Boutans heard that last one. But there's some pretty justifiable anger in Cherry's comment. Do you think it was right that the land went to the Boutan family?
Quote #3
"You got plenty of us in here," I said, looking around the graveyard. I could see Mat, Chimley, Yank—all of them standing near their people's graves. "This where you want them to bring you?" I asked Dirty Red.
"Might as well, if it's still here," he said.
"They getting rid of these old graveyards more and more," I said. These white folks coming up today don't have no respect for the dead." (6.32-4)
Well, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised by what Cherry's talking about, but you have to admit that covering over the graves of somebody's dead loved ones is awfully heartless.