MEMPHIS: You been up there, West?

WEST: Yeah, I went up there and saw her. I didn’t take her to be no more than a hundred or so.

HOLLOWAY: Tell him when that was. Tell him how long that’s been.

WEST: It’s been twenty-two years. That don’t mean she still alive. I ain’t seen her in twenty-two years and she look like she was half-dead then. I can’t imagine what she look like now.

HOLLOWAY: She look like she looked then. She wasn’t but three hundred years old then. I don’t reckon them twenty-two years make that much difference to her.

WEST: The oldest person I buried was Miss Sarah Degree and she was a hundred and twelve. I don’t think nobody can live too much longer than that.

HOLLOWAY: You can go on back up and see her. She still there.

MEMPHIS: What you go up there for, West?

WEST: I went up there to see if my wife was in heaven. I done buried a whole lot of people, but she the first one I ever wondered about. See, people don’t understand about death, but if you ever hear one of them coffin sounds you’d know. There ain’t nothing like it. That coffin get to talking and you know that this here . . .  this what we call life ain’t nothing. You can blow it away with a blink of an eye. But death . . .  you can’t blow away death. It lasts forever. I didn’t understand about it till my wife died. Before that it was just a job. Then when she died I come to understand it. You can live to be a hundred and fifty and you’ll never have a greater moment than when you breathe your last breath. Ain’t nothing you can do in life compared to it. See, right then you done something. You became a part of everything that come before. And that’s a great thing. Ain’t nothing you can do in life compared to that. So I heard about Aunt Ester and went to see if my wife was in heaven. I figure if anybody know she would.

MEMPHIS: What she tell you?

WEST: She told me to take and throw twenty dollars in the river and come back and see her. I thought she was crazy, to tell you the truth. I didn’t pay her no mind. I knew she was old, but I figure she had gotten too old.

HOLLOWAY: That’s what your problem is. You don’t want to do nothing for yourself. You want somebody else to do it for you. Aunt Ester don’t work that way. She say you got to pull your part of the load. But you didn’t want to do that. That’s why you don’t know. And it didn’t cost you but twenty dollars.