“Ma told on her dying bed, but I’d known a full year. Once I caught her hiding the wire cutters. And every time I went to Hardin Town she had me packing salt home. I never let on. I was that good tickled. Ma paid Aus his due, by juckers.”

Someone in the kitchen closed the door between the two rooms. Feet passed quick and small over the floors. Father went to the door and stood for a while, his hand on the knob. But he did not go in. He came back to his chair, worried and restless, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “Alpha’s so puny we can’t go to the burying,” he told Uncle Jolly. “Tell Luce and Toll we wanted to come.”

“Why, Luce and Toll hain’t going to be there,” Uncle Jolly explained. “I’m doing pine-blank what Ma told me to do. On her dying bed she said to nail together a coffin box and get neighbor-women to make a shroud. I promised to take her straight to Flat Creek and bury her down alongside Father. ‘Send nary a word to my chaps/ Ma said. ‘They wouldn’t come when I was low in health. No need they haste to see me dead. Of a summer’s day when the craps are laid by you all can hold a funeralizing if you’re of a mind. Get Brother Sim Mobberly to preach gospel at my grave.’ “

“A body a-dying hain’t in their right mind. You ought to sent word.”

“I tuck a vow.”

“You broke it a-coming by Blackjack.”

“My mule needed rest.”

The sleepless hours weighed upon my eyes. I dozed. On awaking, the blackness of the window was tempered with gray. Higher, along the ridgetops, light was growing. It was colder. My legs were bound with stiffness and my breath fogged. Father had tilted his chair, making talk, questioning. “What if this Sawyers girl says no?” he asked Uncle Jolly. A woolly mist curled out of his mouth.

“She’s said yes a’ready. Jist never said when.”

“Of a sudden you’re in a mighty rush.”

Uncle Jolly got up and stretched. He caught the muscles of his neck and shook himself full awake. He drew a great breath of air. “A man’s the master,” he said. “I writ that letter saying when.” And then he turned toward Father, treading the floor to limber his knee joints. His mouth opened, rounding. A sly grin lifted his jaws. “You know what I done to that letter? In a magazine-book I read where a feller could buy sneeze powders. I fotched me some by mail. Well, now, I dusted that letter good and proper. I dusted it to a fare-you-well.” Laughter rattled in his chest; it choked in his throat.

“Hush,” Father said. He lifted a hand to an ear, catching for a sound through the walls. He had heard something. “Hush.”