They had been eating for several minutes before the boy joined them. He studied her with cadaverous eyes and began to load his plate. She reached another piece of the store bread from its wrapper. She said: I bet I ain’t eat two pones of lightbread in my life. I was raised hard.
The woman regarded her above a poised and dripping forkful of fatmeat. We eat what we’ve a mind to here, she said. We ain’t never had nothin but we don’t care to get just whatever to eat if we got the money. Do we, Luther?
That’s right, he said. I ain’t never belittled my family nothin to eat they wanted. They get that baloney down at the store all the time. They can get them salmons if they’ve a mind to.
She nodded, holding the bread in one hand and applying the butter more slowly. They ate on in silence, jaws working all down the table with great sobriety, all sitting upright and formal saving the toothless old woman who bent nearsightedly into her plate with smacking gums, a sparse tuft of long white chin hairs wagging and drifting above the food.
When the man had finished he pushed back his plate and sat looking about at the others until they began to eat faster, finishing and looking up one by one until all were done but the grandmother. When she finished she set back her plate with one thumb and stared fixedly at the spot where it had been. The man reached and turned down the lamp until the flame showed but crosswise in the wickslot, a dull bronze heat quaking deep in the glass toward which their faces seemed to lean disembodied in a perimeter of smoking icons. The old woman’s leathered lids had closed and she rocked slightly with the ebb of her dreams. Well, said the man, that’s done with, and pushing back his chair he rose from the table. The women began to clear the dishes away, again saving the old woman who opened one eye and looked about and closed it again softly and secretive.
We goin to get a early start of the mornin, the man said.
If you can get that boy prised loose from the bed we might get out of here by midmornin, the woman said. She was wiping off the table. Wake up, mamma, fore ye fall out of the chair again.
That boy’ll be up. Won’t ye, Bud? Where’s he at?
If the waterbucket or woodbox is either one empty he’ll be beyond earshout for sure. Here honey, give me them and set down and rest.
She held the plates stacked against her breast. It’s all right, she said. I don’t care to help.
Well mind the step yander.
All right. I got to get on directly anyhow.
You ain’t goin nowheres tonight.
Well, she said.
Just mind the step yander.
When they had done in the kitchen she followed the woman down the passageway at the rear of the house, the woman holding the lamp before them and so out into the cool night air and across the boardfloored dogtrot, the door falling to behind them and the woman opening the next one and entering, her close behind, a whippoorwill calling from nearby for just as long as they passed through the open and hushing instantly with the door’s closing. She stopped alongside the woman, looking about at the room in which they stood, the two beds that met headfirst in the far corner, one brass and cheaply ornate and the other plain oak, the washstand between them with a porcelained tin basin and a pitcher. The woman set the lamp upon a narrow shelf nailed to the wall.
You want to warsh they’s soap yander. They’s a pitcher of water at the well if it needs primed.
I thank ye, she said, holding the rolled clothes to her breast yet.
When ye get done and get abed just blow out the lamp. Take the big bed yander.
All right.
The woman had started to turn back and now she stopped at the door, eyes squinting and oblique to the light half-masked and narrow as a cat’s. Was they anything you needed? she said.
The young woman looked down, fidgeting with the bundle. No, she said. I ain’t needin nothin. I thank ye.
Well, the woman said. She opened the door and the night air came upon them again sweetly through the warm reek of the room, the whippoorwill calling more distant, the door closing and the woman’s steps fading across the dogtrot and the bird once again more faintly, or perhaps another bird, beyond the warped and waney boards and thin yellow flame that kept her from the night.
She laid her bundle down on the bed and took the lamp and the basin and soap and went out, holding the lamp votively before her and the heat rising pleasantly about her face. She watched the ground, going with care, the basin upright and riding her hip, slowly, processional, a lone acolyte passing across the barren yard, face seized in the light she bore. She found the well and set the basin on the stone pumpstand, adjusted it beneath the spout, took up the long handle and began to work it. It gave out a hoarse gasp and then she felt the long pull of water in the pipe, rising, glutting the iron mouth and spilling into the basin. She took the soap and lathered her hands up in a gritty curded paste, spreading it over her face and then dashing cold water after it, eyes shut fiercely against the soap’s caustic sting. When she had finished she rinsed the basin and took up the lamp from the ground and started for the house. The whippoorwill had stopped and she bore with her now in frenzied colliding orbits about the lamp chimney a horde of moths and night insects. Before she reached the steps she heard the rattle of his canvas breeches along the side of the house. Had she not had the lamp she could have seen him where he stood in the deeper shadow of the eaves watching her. She was upon the steps when he spoke.
Hidy, he said.
She paused and he entered the ring of light with such painful diffidence any watcher would have said he was about something of which he did not approve.
What is it? she said.
He stopped a few feet from her, his hands deep in the rear pockets of his trousers, scraping his feet on the ground like a man who has stepped in manure. Why, he said, I just seen ye goin in, thought I’d say hidy. Where ye goin?
Goin in.
Well, he said. Best not be in no hurry. He looked up at her, face tilted sideways and absurdly coy.
Well, she said, I reckon I best. I’m about give out.
He removed his hands from his pockets, locked his fingers and pushed them out before him until the knuckles cracked, raised them over his head and gripped the back of his neck with them. Kindly a pretty evenin, ain’t it? he said.
She looked up at a sky heavy and starless above them and laden with the false warmth of impending storm. It’s right dark, she said.
Now it is that, he said. Yes. It is a dark’n. He was looking all about him as if to see was it darker in some places than in others. You ain’t afeard of the dark are ye?
No, she said. I don’t reckon.
Shoot, he said. I bet you’re afeard of the dark. I bet you won’t blow out that there lamp. And me standin right here.
She watched him.
If you was to get scared I’d be right here. Bet ye.
Watched him above the glassrimmed flame, him standing loose and smiling a little.
I ain’t got no match to light it back with, she said.
Pshaw, I got matches. Go on. Let’s see if ye will.
I got to get in, she said.
His mouth snapped shut like a turtle’s but she was not there to see it nor the lamp to see it by, already mounting the hewn poplar steps soundlessly and still with her air of staid and canonical propriety, entering the house and turning slender and moth-besieged and closing the door.
She put the lamp on the shelf and sat on the bed. It was a shuck tick and collapsed slowly beneath her with a dry brittle sound and a breath of stale dust. She turned down the lamp and removed her dress and hung it over the brass bedpost. Then she unrolled the shift and put it on and crawled into the bed. She lay on her back very quietly for several minutes, her hands clasped above her stomach, feeling the slack flesh beneath her shift. Then she sat up and cupping her hand behind the lamp chimney blew out the light.