THEY WERE THREE MILES WEST OF TOWN WHEN the sun broke through. The wind tore the clouds to rags, the sun lit the rags on fire and in fiery trails they streamed across a sky that opened like a bruised and tender heart. A few pellets of snow still drifted down and where the wind scoured the asphalt there was black ice and in every dip and swale lay drifts of snow. The big Cadillac sliced through the drifts and soared over the treacherous ice. Now and again they caught up to battered jalopies tiptoeing along the road on tires that were tall and thin and bald as a buzzard, the drivers gritting their teeth as they held on to the wide steering wheels, fighting to keep an ancient Model T or a battered Studebaker from skidding into the barrow pit. Emaline knew most of these people. She hid her face in her hands when Eli swung out to pass and hoped they wouldn’t see her, knowing what they would say. Why, aint that Emaline Hughes settin in that Caddy, pretty as you please? Nothin more than a waitress at the diner, she is, ridin in a automobile like that. The Cadillac rattled the doors of the jalopies as it passed, blinding their drivers with a plume of powdery snow.

The heater began to warm her feet and she untied her scarf, shook the snow out of it and felt her half-frozen hands burn as they thawed. They had lingered for an hour at Velma’s grave, standing too long in the snow and the raw wind, caught in a web of blood relation and antique sin. Emaline wept into the collar of Eli’s sheepskin jacket, then stepped away and closed her back to him, angry with herself for letting him see how she felt inside, like a glass pitcher dropped on a marble floor. She had heard her mother’s voice as plain as if she were right there beside them. Don’t stand in the corner and bawl for buttermilk. At last Eli drew a deep breath, straightened his big gray Stetson and led the way back to the car. He held the door open for her and she stepped into the car, feeling like a sad little princess in the motion pictures. He swept the snow off the windshield with the sleeve of his jacket, started the engine and eased the big car down the hill toward town. At the junction of Route 26, he turned right and gave it the gas and the car took off like an arrow shot from a bow.