Chapter 14

"Do I believe in ghosts" (Here his second wife gave a sniff) Well ma'am I don't believe in ghosts but I do in spirits. (another disgusted sniff from the second wife) I remember one time jest after my first wife died I was a sittin right in that chair your sittin in now. The front door opened and in come a big old grey mule, and I didn't have no grey mule. In she come just as easy like, put one foot down slow, and then the other, and then the other I says 'Mule git out here, you is goin through that floor, sure as youre born. Get out that door.' Mule looked at me sad-like and then just disappeared. And in its place was my first wife, in the clothes she was buried in. She come up to me and I put my arms around her, but I couldn't feel nothin' (another sniff from the second wife) and I says, "Babe, what you want?"

Then she started to git littler and littler and lower and finally went right away through the floor. It was her spirit thats what it was. ("Rats" says the second wife.)

"Another time she came to me by three knocks and made me git up and sleep on another bed where it was better sleepin'."

"I like to go back down in Kentucky on visits as the folks there wont take a thing for bed and vittles. Here they are so selfish wont even gave a drink of water away."

"Yes'm the flood got us. Me and my wife here, we whet away and stayed two months. Was 5 feet in this house, and if it ever gets in here agin, we're goin down in Kentucky and never comin' back no more."

The old man and his wife bowed me out the front door and asked me to come back again and we'ed talk some more about old times.