On the mantelpiece were two letters he had written and sealed with wax streaked with soot. The various notes he had signed were in a jumble, but all together at least, in a wooden casket on the table that held the lamp, and the bottle. He had once been carefree, even careless with the contents of a bottle, but he had learned frugality at the end. He deliberately finished the bottle of corn whiskey before he clenched the pistol to his forehead above and between his eyes.

The sound woke the half-dozen slaves in the two mean cabins near the house, but they did not leave their beds. They guessed the truth, but were afraid to confirm it, and so decided to let it wait till morning. In a curious kind of relief, they slept again. Whatever the future, it would not be the same as the past. The shame of a slave was compounded when he knew himself the chattel of a poor man. If he feared the rich, he despised the poor.

The fire Clarence had set to blaze the evening before, and sat in front of during his last hours, was now dead. The room grew cold as he grew cold. A sudden gust of wind skirled through the cracks around a window frame, stirred, lifted, and carried a fine gray and white ash from the hearth into the room and around the feet of the dead man. The clock ticked. It would not stop until twelve minutes after seven the following evening, at which time Bessie noticed it and told Emily, who wound and started it again, the last thing they did before leaving again for town.

On cold nights the Anderson children—Walt and Clarence, Bessie and Emily—had used to get into woolen night gowns that reached to the floor and run to the fire to warm themselves before bed. Standing before the hearth they would chatter and giggle and tease as their mother smeared tallow over their raw, chapped knuckles and knees; and then they would flee to cold dark rooms, promising to say their prayers in bed. More often than not, they had done so.

“Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take.

Amen.”

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