Study Questions
1. How many times does Tea Cake slap Janie?

2. Why doesn’t Sop-de-Bottom hit his wife anymore?

3. Why don’t the police arrest drunks on the weekend?

4. Why is the whole gang at Mrs. Turner’s café?

5. What do Sterrett and Coodemay order at the café?

6. What does Coodemay ask the waitress to do?

7. How does the fight start?

8. Why does Mrs. Turner try to refuse Tea Cake’s help?

9. What happens when everyone decides to make up?

10. What do Coodemay and Sterrett do on Monday morning?

Answers
1. Tea Cake slaps her “two or three” times.

2. Sop-de-Bottom says that if he tried to hit his wife, not only would she yell so loud the whole county could hear her, she would also knock out his teeth.

3. There are too many drunk people for the jails to hold.

4. They say they are at the café in order to get away from the wives, but according to their plan, they going to pretend to fight in order to wreck the place.

5. Sterrett orders fried fish and coffee, while Coodemay orders beef stew and coffee.

6. Coodemay tells the waitress to hold the food for him while he eats, and the waitress refuses.

7. Coodemay tells Sop-de-Bottom to give him his chair, so that he can sit down. When Sop-de-Bottom refuses, Coodemay tries to push him out of the chair, and the others soon join in.

8. Mrs. Turner soon realizes that Tea Cake’s attempted
interference is just making the boys fight harder, and it is destroying her café more quickly.

9. Coodemay and Sterrett take everybody to old man Vickers in order to treat them to some drinks.

10. Coodemay and Sterrett come into Mrs. Turner’s café to apologize for their behavior. They both leave her five dollars.