Again, one day, she told this merry story of her honored sire:
“A nigger came in there one day,” she said, “an’ told the old man to cut him off a piece of meat an’ wrap it up for him. When the old man gave it to him, the nigger begins to argue with him,” she said, “an’ to give him some back-talk, claimin’ the old man was cheatin’ him on the weight an’ tryin’ to charge him too much fer it! Well, sir,” she said, beginning to gasp a little, “the old man picks up a carving knife an’ he makes one swipe across the counter at that nigger with it—and—har!—har!—har!”—her huge laugh burst out of her mighty breast again and welled upward to a choking, ropy scream, “—that nigger!—that nigger!—his guts came rollin’ out into his hands like sausage meat!” she gasped. “I wish’t you could have seen the look upon his face!” she panted. “He just stood there lookin’ at them like he don’t know what to do with them—and har!—har!—har!”—she cast her swelling throat back and roared with laughter, subsiding finally to huge, gasping mirth—“that was the funniest thing I ever see! If you could a-seen the look upon that nigger’s face!” she panted, wiping at her streaming eyes with the back of her huge paw.
WHENEVER A TALL, strong, powerfully-built man came for the first time into the butcher’s little shop, Mrs. Lampley would immediately comment on his size and strength in a flattering and good-natured tone, but with something speculative and hard in her eye as she surveyed him, as if she was coldly calculating his chances with her in a knockdown fight. Many men had observed this look of appraisal, and George had heard men say that there was something so savagely calculating in it that it had made their blood run cold. She would look them over with a good-natured smile, but with a swift narrowing of her cat-grey eyes as she sized them up, meanwhile saying in a bantering and hearty tone of voice:
“Say! You’re a right big feller, ain’t you? I was lookin’ at you when you came in—you could hardly git through the door,” she chuckled. “I said to myself, ‘I’d hate to git mixed up in any trouble with him,’ I says, ‘I’ll bet a feller like that could hit you an awful lick if you git him mad….’ How much do you weigh?” she would then say, still smiling, but with those cold, narrowed, grey eyes measuring the unhappy stranger up and down.
And when the wretched man had stammered out his weight, she would say softly, in a contemplative fashion: “Uh-huh!” And after going over him a moment longer with those merciless and slitlike eyes, she would say, with an air of hearty finality: “Well, you’re a big ’un, sure enough! I’ll bet you’ll be a big help to your paw an’ maw when you get your growth—har!—har!—har!—har!” And the choking scream of laughter would then burst from her Atlantean breasts and bull-like throat.
When she spoke of her husband she always referred to him as “Lampley,” and this was the way she always addressed him. Her tone when she spoke of him certainly had in it nothing that could be described as affection, for such a feeling would have had no more place in her nature than a swan upon the breast of the flood-tide Mississippi, but her tone had in it a note of brutal and sensual satisfaction that somehow told plainly and terribly of a perfect marriage of savage and limitless sexual energies, and of a mate in the battered figure of that little bullock man who could match and fit this mountain of a woman perfectly in an epic, night-long bout of lust and passion.
Mrs. Lampley spoke constantly, openly, vulgarly, and often with a crude, tremendous humor, of the sexual act, and although she never revealed the secrets of her own marriage bed—if a union so savage, complete, and obvious as the one between herself and her husband could be called a secret—she did not for a moment hesitate to publish her opinions on the subject to the world, to give young married couples, or young men and their girls, advice that would make them flush to the roots of their hair, and to scream with merriment when she saw their confusion.