A Death In The Family (27 page)

“Great heavens, Jay! Do you
mean
that?” He just nodded, and kept his eyes on the road. “Just imagine that, Rufus, she said. “Just think of that!”

“She’s an old, old lady,” his father said gravely; and Ralph gravely and proudly concurred.

“The things she must have seen!” Mary said, quietly. “Indians. Wild animals.” Jay laughed. “I mean man—eaters, Jay. Bears, and wildcats—terrible things.”

“There were cats back in these mountains, Mary—we called em painters, that’s the same as a panther—they were around here still when
I
was a boy. And there is still bear, they claim.”

“Gracious Jay, did you ever see one? A panther?”

“Saw one’d been shot.”

“Goodness,” Mary said.

“A mean-lookin varmint.”

“I know,” she said. “I mean, I
bet
he was. I just can’t get over—why she’s almost as old as the country, Jay.”

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “Ain’t nobody that old. Why I read somewhere, that just these mountains here are the oldest ...”

“Dear, I meant the nation,” she said. “The United States, I mean. Why let me see, why it was hardly as old as I am when she was born.” They all calculated for a moment. “Not even as old,” she said triumphantly.

“By golly,” his father said. “I never thought of it like that.” He shook his head. “By golly,” he said, “that’s a fact.”

“Abraham Lincoln was just two years old,” she murmured. “Maybe three,” she said grudgingly. “Just try to
imagine
that, Rufus,” she said after a moment. “Over a hundred years.” But she could see that he couldn’t comprehend it. “You know what she is?” she said, “she’s Granpa Follet’s
grandmother!
”

“That’s a fact, Rufus,” his grandfather said from the back seat, and Rufus looked around, able to believe it but not to imagine it, and the old man smiled and winked. “Woulda never believed you’d hear me call nobody ‘Granmaw,’ now would you?”

“No sir,” Rufus said.

“Well, yer goana,” his grandfather said, “quick’s I see her.”

Ralph was beginning to mutter and to look worried and finally his brother said, “What’s eaten ye, Ralph? Lost the way?” And Ralph said he didn’t know for sure as he had lost it exactly, no, he wouldn’t swear to that yet, but by golly he was damned if he was sure this was
hit
anymore, all the same.

“Oh
dear
, Ralph, how
too bad
,” Mary said, “but don’t you mind. Maybe we’ll find it. I mean maybe soon you’ll recognize landmarks and set us all straight again.”

But his father, looking dark and painfully patient, just slowed the auto down and then came to a stop in a shady place. “Maybe we better figure it out right now,” he said.

“Nothin round hyer I know,” Ralph said, miserably. “What I mean, maybe we ought to start back while we still know the way back. Try it another Sunday.”

“Oh, Jay.”

“I hate to but we got to get back in town tonight, don’t forget. We could try it another Sunday. Make an early start.” But the upshot of it was that they decided to keep on ahead awhile, anyway. They descended into a long, narrow valley through the woods of which they could only occasionally see the dark ridges and the road kept bearing in a direction Ralph was almost sure was wrong, and they found a cabin, barely even cut out of the woods, they commented later, hardly even a corn patch, big as an ordinary barnyard, but the people there, very glum and watchful, said they had never even heard of her; and after a long while the valley opened out a little and Ralph began to think that perhaps he recognized it, only it sure didn’t look like itself if it was it, and all of a sudden a curve opened into half-forested meadow and there were glimpses of a gray house through swinging vistas of saplings and Ralph said, “By golly,” and again, “By golly, that is
hit
. That’s hit all right. Only we come on it from behind!” And his father began to be sure too, and the house grew larger, and they swung around where they could see the front of it, and his father and his Uncle Ralph and his Grandfather all said, “Why sure enough,” and sure enough it was: and, “There she is,” and there she was: it was a great, square-logged gray cabin closed by a breezeway, with a frame second floor, and an enormous oak plunging from the packed dirt in front of it, and a great iron ring, the rim of a wagon wheel, hung by a chain from a branch of the oak which had drunk the chains into itself, and in the shade of the oak, which was as big as the whole corn patch they had seen, an old woman was standing up from a kitchen chair as they swung slowly in onto the dirt and under the edge of the shade, and another old woman continued to sit very still in her chair.

The younger of the two old women was Great Aunt Sadie, and she knew them the minute she laid eyes on them and came right on up to the side of the auto before they could even get out. “Lord God,” she said in a low, hard voice, and she put her hands on the edge of the auto and just looked from one to the other of them. Her hands were long and narrow and as big as a man’s and every knuckle was swollen and split. She had hard black eyes, and there was a dim purple splash all over the left side of her face. She looked at them so sharply and silently from one to another that Rufus thought she must be mad at them, and then she began to shake her head back and forth. “Lord God,” she said again. “Howdy, John Henry,” she said.

“Howdy, Sadie,” his grandfather said.

“Howdy, Aunt Sadie,” his father and his Aunt Sadie said.

“Howdy, Jay,” she said, looking sternly at his father, “howdy, Ralph,” and she looked sternly at Ralph. “Reckon you must be Jess, and yore Sadie. Howdy, Sadie.”

“This is Mary, Aunt Sadie,” his father said. “Mary, this is Aunt Sadie.”

“I’m proud to know you,” the old woman said, looking very hard at his mother. “I figured it must be you,” she said, just as his mother said, “I’m awfully glad to know you too.” “And this is Rufus and Catherine and Ralph’s Jim-Wilson and Ettie Lou and Jessie’s Charlie after his daddy and Sadie’s Jessie after her Granma and her Aunt Jessie,” his father said.

“Well, Lord God,” the old woman said. “Well, file on out.”

“How’s Granmaw?” his father asked, in a low voice, without moving yet to get out.

“Good as we got any right to expect,” she said, “but don’t feel put out if she don’t know none-a-yews. She mought and she mought not. Half the time she don’t even know me.”

Ralph shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Pore old soul,” he said, looking at the ground. His father let out a slow breath, puffing his cheeks.

“So if I was you-all I’d come up on her kind of easy,” the old woman said. “Bin a coon’s age since she seen so many folks at onct. Me either. Mought skeer her if ye all come a whoopin up at her in a flock.”

“Sure,” his father said.

“Ayy,” his mother whispered.

His father turned and looked back. “Whyn’t you go see her the first, Paw?” he said very low. “Yore the eldest.”

“Tain’t me she wants to see,” Grandfather Follet said. “Hit’s the younguns ud tickle her most.”

“Reckon that’s the truth, if she can take notice,” the old woman said. “She shore like to cracked her heels when she heared
yore
boy was born,” she said to Jay, “Mary or no Mary. Proud as Lucifer. Cause that was the first,” she told Mary.

“Yes, I know,” Mary said. “Fifth generation, that made.”

“Did you get her postcard, Jay?”

“What postcard?”

“Why no,” Mary said.

“She tole me what to write on one a them postcards and put hit in the mail to both a yews so I done it. Didn’t ye never get it?”

Jay shook his head. “First I ever heard tell of it,” he said.

“Well I shore done give hit to the mail. Ought to remember. Cause I went all the way into Polly to buy it and all the way in again to put it in the mail.”

“We never did get it,” Jay said.

“What street did you send it, Aunt Sadie?” Mary asked. “Because we moved not long be ...

“Never sent it to no street,” the old woman said. “Never knowed I needed to, Jay working for the post office.”

“Why, I quit working for the post office a long time back, Aunt Sadie. Even before that.”

“Well I reckon that’s how come then. Cause I just sent hit to ‘Post Office, Cristobal, Canal Zone, Panama,’ and I spelt hit right, too. C-r-i ...”

“Oh,” Mary said.

“Aw,” Jay said. “Why, Aunt Sadie, I thought you’d a known. We been living in Knoxvul since pert near two years before Rufus was born.”

She looked at him keenly and angrily, raising her hands slowly from the edge of the auto, and brought them down so hard that Rufus jumped. Then she nodded, several times, and still she did not say anything. At last she spoke, coldly, “Well, they might as well just put me out to grass,” she said. “Lay me down and give me both barls threw the head.”

“Why, Aunt Sadie,” Mary said gently, but nobody paid any attention.

After a moment the old woman went on solemnly, staring hard into Jay’s eyes: “I knowed that like I know my own name and it plumb slipped my mind.”

“Oh what a shame,” Mary said sympathetically.

“Hit ain’t shame I feel,” the old woman said, “hit’s sick in the stummick.”

“Oh I didn’t m ...”

“Right hyer!” and she slapped her hand hard against her stomach and laid her hand back on the edge of the auto. “If I git like that too,” she said to Jay, “then who’s agonna look out fer her?”

“Aw, tain’t so bad, Aunt Sadie,” Jay said. “Everybody slips up nown then. Do it myself an I ain’t half yer age. And you just ought see Mary.”

“Gracious, yes,” Mary said. “I’m just a perfect scatterbrain.”

The old woman looked briefly at Mary and then looked back at Jay. “Hit ain’t the only time,” she said, “not by a long chalk. Twarn’t three days ago I ...” she stopped. “Takin on about yer troubles ain’t never holp nobody,” she said. “You just set hyer a minute.”

She turned and walked over to the older woman and leaned deep over against her ear and said, quite loudly, but not quite shouting, “Granmaw, ye got company.” And they watched the old woman’s pale eyes, which had been on them all this time in the light shadow of the sunbonnet, not changing, rarely ever blinking, to see whether they would change now, and they did not change at all, she didn’t even move her head or her mouth. “Ye hear me, Granmaw?” The old woman opened and shut her sunken mouth, but not as if she were saying anything. “Hit’s Jay and his wife and younguns, come up from Knoxvul to see you,” she called, and they saw the hands crawl in her lap and the face turned towards the younger woman and they could hear a thin, dry crackling, no words.

“She can’t talk any more,” Jay said, almost in a whisper.

“Oh
no
,” Mary said.

But Sadie turned to them and her hard eyes were bright. “She knows ye,” she said quietly. “Come on over.” And they climbed slowly and shyly out onto the swept ground. “I’ll tell her about the rest a yuns in a minute,” Sadie said.

“Don’t want to mix her up,” Ralph explained, and they all nodded.

It seemed to Rufus like a long walk over to the old woman because they were all moving so carefully and shyly; it was almost like church. “Don’t holler,” Aunt Sadie was advising his parents, “hit only skeers her. Just talk loud and plain right up next her ear.”

“I know,” his mother said. “My mother is very deaf, too.”

“Yeah,” his father said. And he bent down close against her ear. “Granmaw?” he called, and he drew a little away, where she could see him, while his wife and his children looked on, each holding one of the mother’s hands. She looked straight into his eyes and her eyes and her face never changed, a look as if she were gazing at some small point at a great distance, with complete but idle intensity, as if what she was watching was no concern of hers. His father leaned forward again and gently kissed her on the mouth, and drew back again where she could see him well, and smiled a little, anxiously. Her face restored itself from his kiss like grass that has been lightly stepped on; her eyes did not alter. Her skin looked like brown-marbled stone over which water has worked for so long that it is as smooth and blind as soap. He leaned to her ear again. “I’m Jay,” he said. “John Henry’s boy.” Her hands crawled in her skirt: every white bone and black vein showed through the brown-splotched skin; the wrinkled knuckles were like pouches; she wore a red rubber guard ahead of her wedding ring. Her mouth opened and shut and they heard her low, dry croaking, but her eyes did not change. They were bright in their thin shadow, but they were as impersonally bright as two perfectly shaped eyes of glass.

“I figure she know you,” Sadie said quietly.

“She can’t talk, can she?” Jay said, and now that he was not looking at her, it was as if they were talking over a stump.

“Times she can,” Sadie said. “Times she can’t. Ain’t only so seldom call for talk, reckon she loses the hang of it. But I figger she knows ye and I am tickled she does.”

His father looked all around him in the shade and he looked sad, and unsure, and then he looked at him. “Come here, Rufus,” he said.

“Go to him,” his mother whispered for some reason, and she pushed his hand gently as she let it go.

“Just call her Granmaw,” his father said quietly. “Get right up by her ear like you do to Granmaw Lynch and say, ‘Granmaw, I’m Rufus.’ ”