Penelope had written to Sarah telling her what had happened. Sarah had written to her aunt, at first only about the sorrow on Broughton Street, but then to tell about Roscoe’s leaving and Floyd’s taking over his function. As soon as she had Penelope’s report of the funeral, which had been well attended by white and black, Sarah wrote urging her aunt to join them all again at Beulah Land. After she had signed the letter she added a note saying: I have long hoped that you would one day choose to make your home with us at Beulah Land, and Leon wants you too. Won’t you think of it now?

Penelope thought about it, but as each day broke and ran its course and became yesterday, she lingered, unable to make up her mind to go or to stay. She had never within her true memory been without Uncle Joshua. It was not what he had done or said that had counted so heavily; it was not even love in the usual sense. It was rather that Uncle Joshua had been an indefinable force in her life, her life’s witness. She had forever measured herself and her behavior against what he wanted her to be and do. Even when he hadn’t told her, she had known. Without him she was unanchored and adrift. Had he died before her return, she would have blamed herself, but she might still feel his presence and concern. However, she had been there; she had asked, “Do you know me?” And he had not answered her even with a look. His look did not deny her; it did not acknowledge her. For the first time in her life she had seen him concerned not with her but with himself. His intensity was that of a man who must concentrate body and soul on the problem of dying. Ignoring her was only a very incidental part of it.

How could she go to Beulah Land? She could not leave Clarice and Ichabod to tend the house and garden. Who would tell them what to do? They had shared her dependence on Joshua. Then was she never to leave for more than an hour or two; was she, in effect, to seal herself into this house and garden on Broughton Street? Until she decided, there she would abide.

21

Peace abided, for once, at Beulah Land. Sarah and Edna spent a mild day together at the cemetery working around their graves. And when the first genuine freeze, one that promised to last several days, came more or less on schedule toward the end of the first week of December, as it did almost every year, they had their first hog-killing at Beulah Land and at Oaks and at smaller farms thereabout. Every man and woman lent a hand in that, and gladly, for the fleshly rewards and the ritual satisfaction they took in the regular recurrence of the event.