Free In Search of Bisco by Erskine Caldwell

educated wife is the best kind to have around the cook-stove and in the bed besides when there’s an argument with the preacher.
    And I’ll tell you why. I got to arguing with the preacher over at the church not a long while ago and he made me so mad I could’ve jumped him right there and then if it wasn’t for my wife. The way it ended up just goes to show how much good an educated wife can do for a man. I had my coat off and was getting ready to haul off and beat hell out of that preacher for saying I wasn’t acting religious enough to suit him, but she told me to put my coat back on and go home with her and let her calm me down like she knows how.
    That all got started when the preacher said everybody in the church got down on the knees except me when he was praying and that a man who failed to do that needed religion more than anybody else. Even before I left home and went to church that Sunday I told myself I was wearing the first new suit of clothes I’d had for seven years and I wasn’t going to get down on no floor and get the pants all baggy in the knees the first time I wore them.
    Anyhow, I told that preacher I’d whoop and holler and put a little something extra in the collection box but I wasn’t going to ruin a brand-new suit getting the pants baggy in the knees so soon. He got all shaky and shouting and said a man who talked the way I did ought to go to hell and stay there when he died.
    It was right there and then when I shucked off my coat and would’ve jumped him if it hadn’t been for my educated wife. She said she wanted to take me home and calm me down. The preacher said he wanted her to stay after me and everybody else left so he could talk to her in private about my religion. She told him she wouldn’t do that, because it was plain to see he was looking her up and down with poontang in mind. If she hadn’t been an educated school teacher, and if I hadn’t been watching, he could’ve got her where he wanted her for sure.
    Everything worked out just fine after that. The preacher left in a couple of weeks and went off somewhere else and the new preacher who came along said he wanted everybody to stand up in church while he was praying and not get down on their knees on the floor.
    Keeping me from fighting the preacher wasn’t the only thing my wife had a hand in. Like it is, the politicians come around every year or two wanting promised votes, and just last spring one of them walked in here and paid me a dime for a soda pop and then started talking big like God Almighty who’d bought and paid for both me and my wife’s votes. He stomped around on his feet and said he was keeping the black folks in their place and not letting them get a chance to think they could act as good as white people. After a lot of that kind of talk he said me and my wife’s votes would help him keep up his good work against the black folks. That made me mad as hell and I’ll tell you why.
    It was the way that politician came in here and spent a dime and then acting like he was doing me and my wife a favor to keep the black folks from acting like they was as good as white people but not asking me if I wanted that kind of favor done. He kept on talking like that about the colored and I got madder and madder.
    That’s when I opened up and told him if he was so set against the Negroes and all colored people he ought to move clear out of Alabama himself and go somewhere they wouldn’t bother him. He said I talked like a nigger-lover and ought to be ashamed of my white face and that the whole state would go to hell and ruin if it wasn’t for politicians like him who kept the black folks from going to the same schools and churches with whites. Then he ended up saying if I didn’t vote right he was warning me that he’d get some men he knew in Jasper to come around some night and straighten me out for my own good.
    I don’t take that kind of talk from nobody, not even a big politician, and I told him to get the