Johnny Paul
Quote 1
Johnny Paul nodded his head. Not to Beulah. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking way off again, down the quarters toward the field.
"Thirty, forty of us going out in the field with cane knives, hoes, plows—name it. Sunup to sundown, hard miserable work, but we managed to get it done. We stuck together, shared what little we had, and loved and respected each other.
"But just look at things today. Where the people? Where the roses?" (9.103-5)
Johnny Paul gives us a seriously moving image of the way things used to be, and of a community struggling to stay together in the face of so much trying to tear it apart.