How It All Goes Down
It was eleven o'clock of a Spring night in Florida. (1)
The first line of "Sweat" is concise and introduces us to a very specific and important part of the story: the setting. We learn that the protagonist, Delia Jones, is a washwoman and that her husband, Sykes, has disappeared with her horse and cart.
In the middle of sorting clothes, "something long, round, limp and black fell upon [Delia's] shoulders and slithered to the floor beside her" (3). No, it's not a snake (her worst fear), but Sykes's bullwhip. He berates her for bringing 'white folks' clothes into the house and tells her to quit working. When she doesn't, he kicks the clothes around. This guy sounds like a real joy to be around, doesn't he?
A frustrated Delia defends her job and herself with an iron skillet—she's not messing around. This causes a flabbergasted Sykes to leave the house (score). Although he treats her like dirt and is sleeping with another woman by the name of Bertha, Delia vows not to let her no-good hubby bring her down.
It seems as if most of the men in town dislike Sykes—they talk about hanging him, how much of a womanizer he is, and a bunch of other stuff. When he comes into Joe Clarke's shop with Bertha, however, they all grow mute. It's a curious case of a bad man allowed to stay bad by all parties, and we're not quite sure why he gets away with so much dirt.
Things go from bad to worse on the marriage front when Sykes brings a rattlesnake home. Delia asks Sykes to kill it, but of course he won't. One day, the snake escapes and Delia flees the house. Sykes comes home and the snake strikes him with a fatal bite. Delia watches and listens to him suffer, waiting patiently for him to die.