Blues Ain't No Mockingbird

“Go tell that man we ain’t a bunch of trees.”

Granny sets up the story’s entire conflict with this one sentence. She wants the men off her property because they are treating her and her family as though they aren’t human beings. It’s humorous, as are many of the things Granny says, but she is also deadly serious.

“Nice place you got here, aunty. We thought we’d take a—”

One of the men attempts to explain why they’re there. But he isn’t asking permission, and he assumes a familiarity with Granny that she does not welcome. In just a couple sentences (one of which is only a sentence fragment), the man inadvertently exposes his entitlement and patronizing attitude. In a matter of seconds, Granny knows what sort of person she’s dealing with.

“‘I don’t know about the thing, the it, and the stuff,’ said Granny, still talkin with her eyebrows. ‘Just people here is what I tend to consider.’”

Granny has rebuffed the man’s halfhearted compliment on her “nice things,” letting him know that she doesn’t care what he thinks about her property. She is only concerned with “people here,” meaning the county men. She is strongly indicating to the men that they are not welcome, without explicitly saying it.