Study Questions
1. When does the bean season open?

2. Why is Tea Cake waiting for his new boss?

3. Why doesn’t Tea Cake gamble while they are waiting for the beans to grow?

4. How does Tea Cake make Janie practice shooting?

5. What is Tea Cake’s favorite dish?

6. Why does Janie make dessert every night?

7. What happens when the houses fill up?

8. Why do people come to Tea Cake and Janie’s house every night?

9. How often does Tea Cake win at gambling?

10. Who won the card game?

Answers
1. The bean season opens near the end of September.

2. Tea Cake’s boss left to get more seed.

3. Tea Cake hasn’t been gambling because everyone at the farm is still poor.

4. He has Janie shoot at very small things in order to improve her aim.

5. Tea Cake’s favorite dish is baked beans.

6. Tea Cake likes dessert because “it gives a man something to taper off on.”

7. Once the houses fill up, the workers pay the boss so that they can sleep on his property in the open air.

8. Sometimes they come to hear and trade stories and jokes; sometimes they come to hear Tea Cake play the guitar, but usually they come to gamble.

9. Tea Cake won occasionally, but not too often, since there were a lot of good gamblers among the farmers.

10. Ed Dockery beat Sop-de-Bottom in the card game.