Sairy looked in, saying, “Can I give you any help?”
Ma looked slowly up. “Come in,” she said. “I like to talk to ya.”
“That’s a good big girl you got,” said Sairy. “She’s right in peelin’ potatoes. What can I do to help?”
“I was gonna wash Grampa all over,” said Ma, “but he got no other clo’es to put on. An’ ‘course your quilt’s spoilt. Can’t never get the smell a death from a quilt. I seen a dog growl an’ shake at a mattress my ma died on, an’ that was two years later. We’ll drop ‘im in your quilt. We’ll make it up to you. We got a quilt for you.”
Sairy said, “You shouldn’ talk like that. We’re proud to help. I ain’t felt so- safe in a long time. People needs- to help.”
Ma nodded. “They do,” she said. She looked long into the old whiskery face, with its bound jaw and silver eyes shining in the candlelight. “He ain’t gonna look natural. We’ll wrop him up.”
“The ol’ lady took it good.”
“Why, she’s so old,” said Ma, “maybe she don’t even rightly know what happened. Maybe she won’t really know for quite a while. Besides, us folks takes a pride holdin’ in. My pa used to say, ‘Anybody can break down. It takes a man not to.’ We always try to hold in.” She folded the quilt neatly about Grampa’s legs and around his shoulders. She brought the corner of the quilt over his head like a cowl and pulled it down over his face. Sairy handed her half-a-dozen big safety pins, and she pinned the quilt neatly and tightly about the long package. And at last she stood up. “It won’t be bad burying,” she said. “We got a preacher to see him in, an’ his folks is all aroun’.” Suddenly she swayed a little, and Sairy went to her and steadied her. “It’s sleep-” Ma said in a shamed tone. “No, I’m awright. We been so busy gettin’ ready, you see.”
“Come out in the air,” Sairy said.
“Yeah, I’m all done here.” Sairy blew out the candle and the two went out.
A bright fire burned in the bottom of the little gulch. And Tom, with sticks and wire, had made supports from which two kettles hung and bubbled furiously, and good steam poured out under the lids. Rose of Sharon knelt on the ground out of range of the burning heat, and she had a long spoon in her hand. She saw Ma come out of the tent, and she stood up and went to her.
“Ma,” she said. “I got to ask.”
“Scared again?” Ma asked. “Why, you can’t get through nine months without sorrow.”
“But will it- hurt the baby?”
Ma said, “They used to be a sayin’, ‘A chile born outa sorrow’ll be a happy chile.’ Isn’t that so, Mis’ Wilson?”
“I heard it like that,” said Sairy. “An’ I heard the other: ‘Born outa too much joy’ll be a doleful boy.'”
“I’m all jumpy inside,” said Rose of Sharon.
“Well, we ain’t none of us jumpin’ for fun,” said Ma. “You jes’ keep watchin’ the pots.”
On the edge of the ring of firelight the men had gathered. For tools they had a shovel and a mattock. Pa marked out the ground- eight feet long and three feet wide. The work went on in relays. Pa chopped the earth with the mattock and then Uncle John shoveled it out. Al chopped and Tom shoveled. Noah chopped and Connie shoveled. And the hole drove down, for the work never diminished in speed. The shovels of dirt flew out of the hole in quick spurts. When Tom was shoulder deep in the rectangular pit, he said, “How deep, Pa?”
“Good an’ deep. A couple feet more. You get out now, Tom, and get that paper wrote.”
Tom boosted himself out of the hole and Noah took his place. Tom went to Ma, where she tended the fire. “We got any paper an’ pen, Ma?”
Ma shook her head slowly, “No-o. That’s one thing we didn’ bring.” She looked toward Sairy. And the little woman walked quickly to her tent. She brought back a Bible and a half pencil. “Here,” she said. “They’s a clear page in front. Use that an’ tear it out.” She handed book and pencil to Tom.
Tom sat down in the firelight. He squinted his eyes in concentration, and at last wrote slowly and carefully on the end paper in big clear letters: “This here is William James Joad, dyed of a stroke, old old man. His fokes bured him becaws they got no money to pay for funerls. Nobody kilt him. Jus a stroke and he dyed.” He stopped. “Ma, listen to this here.” He read it slowly to her.
“Why, that soun’s nice,” she said. “Can’t you stick on somepin from Scripture so it’ll be religious? Open up an’ git a sayin’, somepin outa Scripture.”
“Got to be short,” said Tom. “I ain’t got much room lef’ on the page.”
Sairy said, “How ’bout ‘God have mercy on his soul’?”
“No,” said Tom. “Sounds too much like he was hung. I’ll copy somepin.” He turned the pages and read, mumbling his lips, saying the words under his breath. “Here’s a good short one,” he said. “‘An’ Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord.'”
“Don’t mean nothin’,” said Ma. “Long’s you’re gonna put one down, it might’s well mean somepin.”
Sairy said, “Turn to Psalms, over further. You kin always get somepin outa Psalms.”
Tom flipped the pages and looked down the verses. “Now here is one,” he said. “This here’s a nice one, just blowed full a religion: ‘Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.’ How’s that?”
“That’s real nice,” said Ma. “Put that one in.”
Tom wrote it carefully. Ma rinsed and wiped a fruit jar and Tom screwed the lid down tight on it. “Maybe the preacher ought to wrote it,” he said.
Ma said, “No, the preacher wan’t no kin.” She took the jar from him and went into the dark tent. She unpinned the covering and slipped the fruit jar in under the thin cold hands and pinned the comforter tight again. And then she went back to the fire.
The men came from the grave, their faces shining with perspiration. “Awright,” said Pa. He and John and Noah and Al went into the tent, and they came out carrying the long, pinned bundle between them. They carried it to the grave. Pa leaped into the hole and received the bundle in his arms and laid it gently down. Uncle John put out a hand and helped Pa out of the hole. Pa asked, “How about Granma?”
“I’ll see,” Ma said. She walked to the mattress and looked down at the old woman for a moment. Then she went back to the grave. “Sleepin’,” she said. “Maybe she’d hold it against me, but I ain’t a-gonna wake her up. She’s tar’d.”
Pa said, “Where at’s the preacher? We oughta have a prayer.”
Tom said, “I seen him walkin’ down the road. He don’t like to pray no more.”
“Don’t like to pray?”
“No,” said Tom. “He ain’t a preacher no more. He figgers it ain’t right to fool people actin’ like a preacher when he ain’t a preacher. I bet he went away so nobody wouldn’ ast him.”
Casy had come quietly near, and he heard Tom speaking. “I didn’ run away,” he said. “I’ll he’p you folks, but I won’t fool ya.”
Pa said, “Won’t you say a few words? Ain’t none of our folks ever been buried without a few words.”
“I’ll say ’em,” said the preacher.
Connie led Rose of Sharon to the graveside, she reluctant. “You got to,” Connie said. “It ain’t decent not to. It’ll jus’ be a little.”
The firelight fell on the grouped people, showing their faces and their eyes, dwindling on their dark clothes. All the hats were off now. The light danced, jerking over the people.
Casy said, “It’ll be a short one.” He bowed his head, and the others followed his lead. Casy said solemnly, “This here ol’ man jus’ lived a life an’ jus’ died out of it. I don’t know whether he was good or bad, but that don’t matter much. He was alive, an’ that’s what matters. An’ now he’s dead, an’ that don’t matter. Heard a fella tell a poem one time, an’ he says, ‘All that lives is holy.’ Got to thinkin’, an’ purty soon it means more than the words says. An’ I wouldn’ pray for a ol’ fella that’s dead. He’s awright. He got a job to do, but it’s all laid out for ‘im an’ there’s on’y one way to do it. But us, we got a job to do, an’ they’s a thousan’ ways, an’ we don’ know which one to take. An’ if I was to pray, it’d be for the folks that don’ know which way to turn. Grampa here, he got the easy straight. An’ now cover ‘im up and let ‘im get to his work.” He raised his head.