“Then call them up and tell them I’m coming.” I looked at him. He was so good to me, so perfect, he never let anything happen to me. No matter what happened he would fix it. “Tell someone to call and get an application. I made A’s at Vandy, Daddy. I can go to college anywhere I want to.”

“I’ll take care of it this afternoon. Come on now, Sister, let’s get on down to the church and get this over with.” I walked to the door and he took my arm and led me down the stairs and put me in the front seat of his Cadillac with Momma on the other side. My little brothers rode with Dudley and Annie.

When we got to the church, Charles William and Irise were waiting on the sidewalk and walked in with us. The coffin sat on a stand before the altar. The priest intoned the service with tears rolling down his cheeks. “I am the resurrection and the life saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

“I know that my redeemer liveth: and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.”

* * *

Doctor Morgan and Mrs. Morgan sat on the front row with people from Chemistrand and their old friends and brothers and sisters who had chartered a plane to come and be with them. Their other child was buried in Massachusetts, but for some reason they had decided to bury Clay here, in the cemetery behind the church. Although there had not been any room in the cemetery for years, a plot was found for them and a stone put into place. A tall plain stone of Carrera marble. “Clay Alexander Morgan, 1934–1954. ‘I Have Let Fall Death.’ Hadrian, A.D. 1.”

After the service and the burial, my family and I went out to the Morgans’ house and stayed a long time on the screened porch talking to people and standing shoulder to shoulder with our hands folded. At some point my mother led me back to Patricia’s bedroom and the three of us talked for a while. “You mustn’t blame yourself,” she said. “I gave you the wine.”

“It was the rain,” I answered, as I had every time we had the conversation. We had had the conversation in the hospital after Clay died and in the church before the ceremony and now we were having it again. “It was the rain, not the wine.”

“It’s not a judgment,” Patricia said. “It’s only that he’s gone.” She was sitting on the bed and my mother was sitting beside her and I was standing. One of the Morgans’ friends from Massachusetts came into the room.