after dinner the babies and all the children except rufus were laid out on the beds to take their naps, and his mother thought he ought to lie down too, but his father said no, why did he need to, so he was allowed to stay up. he stayed out on the porch with the men. they were so full up and sleepy they hardly even tried to talk, and he was so full up and sleepy that he could hardly see or hear, but half dozing between his father’s knees in the thin shade, trying to keep his eyes open, he could just hear the mild, lazy rumbling of their voices, and the more talkative voices of the women back in the kitchen, talking more easily, but keeping their voices low, not to wake the children, and the rattling of the dishes they were doing, and now and then their walking here or there along the floor; and mused with half-closed eyes which went in and out of focus with sleepiness, upon the slow twinkling of the millions of heavy leaves on the trees and the slow flashing of the blades of the corn, and nearer at hand, the hens dabbing in the pocked dirt yard and the ragged edge of the porch floor, and everything hung dreaming in a shining silver haze, and a long, low hill of blue silver shut off everything against a blue-white sky, and he leaned back against his father’s chest and he could hear his heart pumping and his stomach growling and he could feel the hard knees against his sides, and the next thing he knew his eyes opened and he was looking up into his mother’s face and he was lying on a bed and she was saying it was time to wake up because they were going on a call and see his great-great-grandmother and she would most specially want to see him because he was her oldest great-great-grandchild. and he and his father and mother and catherine got in the front seat and his granpa follet and aunt jessie and her baby and jim-wilson and ettie lou and aunt sadie and her baby got in the back seat and uncle ralph stood on the running board because he was sure he could remember the way and that was all there was room for, and they started off very carefully down the lane, so nobody would be jolted, and even before they got out to the road his mother asked his father to stop a minute, and she insisted on taking ettie lou with them in front, to make a little more room in back, and after she insisted for a while, they gave in, and then they all got started again, and his father guided the auto so very carefully across the deep ruts into the road, the other way four lafollette as ralph told him to (“yeah, i know,” his father said, “i remember that much anyhow.”), that they were hardly joggled at all, and his mother commented on how very nicely and carefully his father always drove when he didn’t just forget and go too fast, and his father blushed, and after a few minutes his mother began to look uneasy, as if she had to go to the bathroom but didn’t want to say anything about it, and after a few minutes more she said, “jay, i’m awfully sorry but now i really think you are forgetting.”
“forgetting what?” he said.
“i mean a little too fast, dear,” she said.
“good road along here,” he said. “got to make time while the road’s good.” he slowed down a little. “way i remember it,” he said, “there’s some stretches you can’t hardly ever get a mule through, we’re coming to, ain’t they ralph?”
“oh mercy,” his mother said.
“we are just raggin you,” he said. “they’re not all that bad. but all the same we better make time while we can.” and he sped up a little.
after another two or three miles uncle ralph said, “now around this bend you run through a branch and you turn up sharp to the right,” and they ran through the branch and turned into a sandy woods road and his father went a little slower and a cool breeze flowed through them and his mother said how lovely this shade was after that terrible hot sun, wasn’t it, and all the older people murmured that it sure was, and almost immediately they broke out of the woods and ran through two miles of burned country with stumps and sometimes whole tree trunks sticking up out of it sharp and cruel, and blackberry and honeysuckle all over the place, and a hill and its shadow ahead. and when they came within the shadow of the hill, uncle ralph said in a low voice, “now you get to the hill, start along the base of it to your left till you see your second right and then you take that,” but when they got there, there was only the road to the left and none to the right and his father took it and nobody said anything, and after a minute uncle ralph said, “reckon they wasn’t much to choose from there, was they?” and laughed unhappily.
“that’s right,” his father said, and smiled.
“reckon my memory ain’t so sharp as i bragged,” ralph said.
“you’re doin fine,” his father said, and his mother said so too.
“i could a swore they was a road both ways there,” ralph said, “but it was nigh on twenty years since i was out here.” why for goodness sake, his mother said, then she certainly thought he had a wonderful memory.
“how long since you were here, jay?” he did not say anything. “jay?”
“i’m a-studyin it,” he said.
“there’s your turn,” ralph said suddenly, and they had to back the auto to turn into it.
they began a long, slow, winding climb, and rufus half heard and scarcely understood their disjointed talking. his father had not been there in nearly thirteen years; the last time was just before he came to knoxville. he was always her favorite, ralph said. yes, his grandfather said, he reckoned that was a fact, she always seemed to take a shine to jay. his father said quietly that he always did take a shine to her. it turned out he was the last of those in the auto who had seen her. they asked how she was, as if it had been within a month or two. he said she was failing lots of ways, specially getting around, her rheumatism was pretty bad, but in the mind she was bright as a dollar, course that wasn’t saying how they might find her by now, poor old soul; no use saying. nope, uncle ralph said, that was a fact; time sure did fly, didn’t it; seemed like before you knew it, this year was last year. she had never yet seen jay’s children, or ralph’s, or jessie’s or sadie’s, it was sure going to be a treat for her. a treat and a surprise. yes it sure would be that, his father said, always supposing she could still recognize them. mightn’t she even have died? his mother wanted to know. oh no, all the follets said, they’d have heard for sure if she’d died. matter of fact they had heard she had failed a good bit. sometimes her memory slipped up and she got confused, poor old soul. his mother said well she should think so, poor old lady. she asked, carefully, if she was taken good care of. oh, yes, they said. that she was. sadie’s practically giving her life to her. that was grandpa follet’s oldest sister and young sadie was named for her. lived right with her tending to her wants, day and night. well, isn’t that just wonderful, his mother said. wasn’t anybody else could do it, they agreed with each other. all married and gone, and she wouldn’t come live with any of them, they all offered, over and over, but she wouldn’t leave her home. i raised my family here, she said, i lived here all my life from fourteen years on and i aim to die here, that must be a good thirty-five, most, a good near forty year ago, grampaw died. goodness sake, his mother said, and she was an old old woman then! his father said soberly, “she’s a hundred and three years old. hundred and three or hundred and four. she never could remember for sure which. but she knows she wasn’t born later than eighteen-twelve. and she always reckoned it might of been eighteen-eleven.”
“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.’ ”
he walked over to her as quietly as if she were asleep, feeling strange to be by himself, and stood on tiptoe beside her and looked down into her sunbonnet towards her ear. her temple was deeply sunken as if a hammer had struck it and frail as a fledgling’s belly. her skin was crosshatched with the razor-fine slashes of innumerable square wrinkles and yet every slash was like smooth stone; her ear was just a fallen intricate flap with a small gold ring in it, her smell was faint yet very powerful, and she smelled like new mushrooms and old spices and sweat, like his fingernail when it was coming off. “granmaw, i’m rufus,” he said carefully, and yellow-white hair stirred beside her ear. he could feel coldness breathing from her cheek.
“come out where she can see you,” his father said, and he drew back and stood still further on tiptoe and leaned across her, where she could see. “i’m rufus,” he said, smiling, and suddenly her eyes darted a little and looked straight into his, but they did not in any way change their expression. they were just color: seen close as this, there was color through a dot at the middle, dim as blue-black oil, and then a circle of blue so pale it was almost white, that looked like glass, smashed into a thousand dimly sparkling pieces, smashed and infinitely old and patient, and then a ring of dark blue, so fine and sharp no needle could have drawn it, and then a clotted yellow full of tiny squiggles of blood, and then a wrong-side furl of red-bronze, and little black lashes. vague light sparkled in the crackled blue of the eye like some kind of remote ancestor’s anger, and the sadness of time dwelt in the blue-breathing, oily center, lost and alone and far away, deeper than the deepest well. his father was saying something, but he did not hear and now he spoke again, careful to be patient, and rufus heard, “tell her ‘i’m jay’s boy.’ say, ‘i’m jay’s boy rufus.’ ”
and again he leaned into the cold fragrant cavern next her ear and said, “i’m jay’s boy rufus,” and he could feel her face turn towards him.
“now kiss her,” his father said, and he drew out of the shadow of her bonnet and leaned far over and again entered the shadow and kissed her paper mouth, and the mouth opened, and the cold sweet breath of rotting and of spice broke from her with the dry croaking, and he felt the hands take him by the shoulders like knives and forks of ice through his clothes. she drew him closer and looked at him almost glaring, she was so filled with grave intensity. she seemed to be sucking on her lower lip and her eyes filled with light, and then, as abruptly as if the two different faces had been joined without transition in a strip of moving-picture film, she was not serious any more but smiling so hard that her chin and her nose almost touched and her deep little eyes giggled for joy. and again the croaking gurgle came, making shapes which were surely words but incomprehensible words, and she held him even more tightly by the shoulders, and looked at him even more keenly and incredulously with her giggling, all but hidden eyes, and smiled and smiled, and cocked her head to one side, and with sudden love he kissed her again. and he could hear his mother’s voice say, “jay,” almost whispering, and his father say, “let her be,” in a quick, soft, angry voice, and when at length they gently disengaged her hands, and he was at a little distance, he could see that there was water crawling along the dust from under her chair, and his father and his aunt sadie looked gentle and sad and dignified, and his mother was trying not to show that she was crying, and the old lady sat there aware only that something had been taken from her, but growing quickly calm, and nobody said anything about it.
