It was late afternoon when I got to Tulip with the doctor, and Kady was there at the church, and she and I waited while he went up to certify the death or whatever it is they do. In a minute a wagon came up the creek with two men in it, and they had a tool chest from the old drift mouth of the mine. They went on up to a cabin, and pretty soon here came the sound of hammering. “You hear that, Jess?”
“What are they up to?”
“They’re making a casket.”
“Who asked them to?”
“Moke I guess.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“He’s burying her.”
“Him and who else?”
“These women here, these relations of his, they’ve already got her washed, and soon as the doctor gets through they’re going to lay her out.”
“Funny they didn’t speak to me about it.”
“Is there any reason they should?”
“Before the law, she was my wife.”
“Before God, she was his.”
“He certainly didn’t act much like it.”
“They made up their quarrel, whatever it was about. He loved her, even if he is such a poor excuse for a man, and it seems to me you don’t have to get up on your ear and be onry just because you don’t like him.”
“I loved her once.”
“This is now.”
Three boys came down the hill with bunches of laurel, for the funeral, and Kady took them inside the church and showed them where to put it. I knew them all, Lew Cass, Bobby Hunter, and Luke Blue, but I didn’t pay any attention to it till later that not one of them spoke to me.
In the morning Mr. Rivers, that was doing the preaching, stopped by in his car to take us up to the church. Kady got in, and Jane got in with Danny, and I started to get in. “Hold on, Jess. Nothing was said about you.”
“Does there have to be?”
“Well now I don’t know.”
“I don’t need any special invitation.”
I got in, and he sat there holding the wheel a minute or two, like he was thinking, then he drove on. In the clearing by the church were some cars and that’s where he parked. The girls got out with the baby and we all started for the church. “Hold on, not so fast.”
Ed Blue came out with three or four others, and they had rifles. “It’s all right for Kady and Jane and the baby. But Jess, he stays out.”
“Who says so?”
“Moke.”
Kady and Jane looked at each other, and after a while Kady said: “Jess, I think it’s awful of him, and if I could I’d leave with you, right now. But it’s my mother. I can’t just turn my back on her.”
“That how you feel, Jane?”
“Yes, Jess.”
“Then there’s nothing I can do but go, but you’re not taking Danny in there. That runt stole him once, and maybe he takes some other fool notion now. I’m taking him home.”
“Maybe you better.”
When I got back to the house with him, walking, Wash was there, in his car, reading the morning paper.
“Funeral too much for him hey?”
“It wasn’t him, it was me.”
When he heard what had happened, he cussed and raved and said we should each take a gun and go up there and clean the place out.
“We can’t do it, Wash.”
“Why not?”
“In the first place, it’s a funeral, and it’s entitled not to be busted up by any shooting. And in the second place, if I start anything like that, I got to leave Danny, and they’ll find some way to get back at me by getting back on him.”
“I’d forgot about that.”
He marched up and down by the creek, snapping his fingers, and then pretty soon he went in the cabin and came out with my rifle.
“Don’t worry, I won’t do any more than I have to. But we still got that little lookout back of his cabin, that I can get to up through the woods without being seen, and when he gets back from the church we’re going to start right where we left off. I’m going to throw down on him, and he’s coming with me, and he’s going right off to jail, where he was headed before. What he’s forgot is that he’s still the kidnapper of my boy, and if Blount’s where I’ve got to take him, I got all day, and not any stuff about Danny not having a name is going to stop me this time. He’ll have a name in plenty time for the grand jury to do their stuff.”
And he went up the path through the woods. But when he came back he was alone.
“Jess, you remember why we picked that spot?”
“So we could hear.”
“And I heard everything. I could hear every word the preacher said, and the hymns they sung, and somebody crying. And then, when I crept out to the bank of the gully and looked down, I could see them all. They came out of the church, six men, carrying a little gray casket.”
“Made from a tool chest they stole.”
‘That’s just about it. They had taken two pieces of rope, and stapled them along each side, so they had handholds. They carried it to the graveyard back of the church, and there they had some more preaching. Then they lowered it with two other pieces of rope into the grave. Then it broke up. And then I got my gun ready, because here came Moke, up the gully to his shack, alone. But Kady called him, and came running up to say good-by. He didn’t pay much attention to her, and said he had heard she was going to get married, and he’d see her at the wedding. And she said she had decided to get married in town, in Carbon City, the first I had heard of it.”
“First I heard of it too.”
“She had wanted it in that little church.”
“Until they kicked me out.”
“That’s probably it. So he said all right, he’d come to the cabin, and ride in to the church with her. She said there might not be room. He said he’d go in on the bus. And then, Jess, do you know what she said?”
“I’m listening.”
“She said, ‘Moke, at my wedding I only want friends, though I’ve tried to treat you as decent as I know how on account of my mother. And if you show up, I’m going to ask Jess to do to you exactly what you did to him. Keep you out, if he’s got to take a rifle to do it. Good-by and good luck, but from now on, you keep out of my life.’ ”
“What did he say to that?”
“What could he say?”
“He took it?”
“He turned around and went in his shack. And Jess, maybe you think I’m a yellow quitting dog, but that satisfies me if it does you.”
“It satisfies me.”
“Then to hell with him.”
“Like she said, let’s kick him out of our life.”
We shook hands, and he ran in to hang up the rifle again, before the girls got back and Kady found out what he’d been up to.
“Jess, are you happy?”
“For the first time in my life.”
“Me too, I just can’t believe it. Is it wrong to feel like that, the very same night you buried your mother?”
“Why would it be?”
“Maybe this is how it should be, Jess. That one part of my life should begin just when the other part ends. Because if there’s one part of me I’ve got to fight, like you always told me, it’s no trouble to figure out where it came from. And that part we just buried. And tomorrow, I start a new life. With the other part of me. And it’s no trouble to figure out where that came from, either. You gave in a little bit, Jess. But no more than you had to, to keep me home, and out of the devilment I was sliding into. On the big things, you fought it out, and made me fight it out. If I’m beholden to anybody for anything, it’s to you for that, Jess. I’ll always be.”
She put her hand in mine, with the moon hanging over the woods and making the creek look like silver. “I love you, Kady.”
“And I love you, Jess. And I’m so proud of you.”
“I hate it that you’re going, but I’m glad.”
“I’ve cost you money, Jess.”