Mister Johnson steps up close and Sarah slips off to the side of the gathering, away from the pack, like she doesn’t rightly belong, or doesn’t want to. Red sees me watching her and moves to stand beside her. She crosses her arms and angles her body from him, and I mark the tension hanging between them, heavy and charged like the air before a storm.

“We are all sorry to lose Ben,” Mister Johnson says. “And, Bessie, I know you feel this blow keenly, but take comfort. Ben was God-fearing and the Lord will raise him up to his rightful place in Heaven.”

He opens his Bible and reads from the Psalms, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.” He talks about Ben’s dutiful and obedient life and praises him as a model for everyone else to follow. Then he has the men shovel dirt on top of Ben’s box. He says a blessing over the grave, pats Bessie on her back, and leaves for the house.

The rest gather around the fresh grave speaking their own tributes. Giving him a good end. The loss of my family is still fresh enough that it’s them I’m thinking of, no matter what’s being said about Ben. I try to hide my tears with blinking and swiping. Clover and Samson start up a song of passing, a simple tune and refrain. I’ve never heard it before, but everyone else knows it. When they repeat the chorus for the third time, I join in. Straight off, the others stop singing. It’s like the night of fiddle playing by the fire. This is their grief, and I’m not a part of it. I mean no disrespect, but, in truth, if an Englishman came to Dermot’s funeral—even if he hadn’t been a landlord; even if he hadn’t captained a ship that carried Irish food to English markets—I’d have struck him before I let him cry at my brother’s funeral.

I look at Bessie, clutching my cross in her hands. I know that kind of pain and I’ve no wish to make it worse. I turn to go, catching Sarah’s eye. When I’ve rounded the bend, a man starts up a song about going to Heaven along the Jordan River. I guess that it’s Red’s voice and I keep walking.

Chapter 20

Sarah

Folks have been looking at me and whispering about me and I keep my distance from all of them. Red, Bessie, Maple, and even Henry. Whatever thing I might be feeling for him, at the end of the day, he’s just a white man passing through.

In front of the kitchen house, I got a basket of peas for shelling, and I’m near about through when Red comes hovering.

“You think those clouds might blow this way?” he says.

I keep shelling. I don’t care where the clouds blow.

He swoops down into my bowl and takes up a handful of peas and stuffs them in his mouth.