“Then you owe the Devil a day’s work and you better keep watch on yourself ’less you get fixed.” Upon the last word in this pronouncement she had locked her eyes on his and seemed to look right into his soul. It was as if she knew that he was doomed to stand on the Left Side on that Day, no matter what good he still might do in life. He had said nothing, but her eyes looked so deep into his own that he had no other choice but to hold his head down. He looked away, and far up the street he could see the Crab Lady, swaying along in the dirt. Then he had run.

Late in the night there was another sound Thomas could hear in his bed, next to his brother. This sound did not come every night, but it was a steady sound and it made him shiver when it did come. He would be lying close and warm against his brother’s back and the sound would bring him away from sleep.

“Mr. Jones! I love you, Mr. Jones!”

This was the horrible night sound of the Barefoot Lady, who came whenever she was drunk to rummage through the neighborhood garbage cans for scraps of food, and to stand before the locked door of the Herbert L. Jones Funeral Parlor and wake the neighborhood with her cry: “Mr. Jones! I love you, Mr. Jones!”

“Eddie, wake up!” He would push his brother’s back. “It’s the Barefoot Lady again.”

Fully awake, they would listen to her pitiful moans, like a lonely dog at midnight or the faraway low whistle of a night train pushing along the edge of the town, heading north.

“She scares me,” he would say to his brother.

“Yeah, Tommy,” his brother would say.

There were certain creaking sounds about the old house that were only audible on the nights when she screamed.

“Why does she love Mr. Jones? He’s a undertaker,” he would ask his brother. But there would be no answer because his brother was younger and still knew how to be very quiet when he was afraid.

“Mr. Jones! I love you, Mr. Jones!”

“It’s nighttime,” Thomas would go on, talking to himself. “She ought to be scared by all the bodies he keeps in the back room. But maybe it ain’t the bodies. Maybe Mr. Jones buried somebody for her a long time ago for free and she likes him for it. Maybe she never gets no chance to see him in the daytime so she comes at night. I bet she remembers that person Mr. Jones buried for her for free and gets drunk and comes in the night to thank him.”

“Shut up, Tommy, please,” Edward said in the dark. “I’m scared.” Edward moved closer to him in the bed and then lay very quiet. But he still made the covers move with his trembling.

“Mr. Jones! I love you, Mr. Jones!”