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.
"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.
Quote 3
"I tried talking. She wouldn't listen," I said.
"You tried throwing her butt into the back of that car?" Mapes asked.
"No, I didn't try that, Mapes," I told him. "I hear there's a law against kidnapping people. Especially on their own place."
"There's a law against harboring a murder, too," Mapes said. "You ever heard of that law?"
I didn't answer him. (8.166-69)
We don't know about you, but it sure does seem that the way the law normally works doesn't really seem to be working here, does it?