A Death in the Family - James Agee [37]
“Gee. I’m sorry not to see them. Is it so late?”
“You must have been in here nearly an hour! What was the matter with him?”
“Bad dream, I reckon; fraid of the dark.”
“He’s all right? Before he went to sleep, I mean?”
“Sure he’s all right. ” He pointed at the dog. “Look what I found. ”
“Goodness sake, where was it?”
“Back in the corner, under the crib. ”
“Well shame on me! But Jay, it must be awfully dirty!”
“Naww; I dusted it off. ”
She said, shyly, “I’ll be glad when I can stoop again.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “So will I.”
“Jay,” she drew away, really offended.
“Honey!” he said, amused and flabbergasted. He put his arm around her. “I only meant the baby! I’ll be glad when the baby’s here!”
She looked at him intently (she did not yet realize that she was near-sighted), understood him, and smiled and then laughed softly in her embarrassment. He put his finger to her lips, jerking his head towards the crib. They turned and looked down at their son.
“So will I, Jay darling,” she whispered. “So will I.”
His mother sang to him too. Her voice was soft and shining gray like her deargray eyes. She sang, “Sleep baby sleep, Thy father watches the sheep, ” and he could see his father sitting on a hillside looking at a lot of white sheep in the darkness but why; “thy mother shakes the dream-land tree and down fall little dreams on thee, ” and he could see the little dreams floating down easily like huge flakes of snow at night and covering him in the darkness like babes in the wood with wide quiet leaves of softly shining light. She sang, “Go tell Aunt Rhoda, ” three times over, and then, “The old gray goose is dead,” and then “She’s worth the saving, ” three times over, and then “To make a featherbed, ” and then again. Three times over. Go tell Aunt Rhoda; and then again the old gray goose is dead. He did not know what “she’s worth the saving” meant, and it was one of the things he always took care not to ask, because although it sounded so gentle he was also sure that somewhere inside it there was something terrible to be afraid of exactly because it sounded so gentle, and he would become very much afraid instead of only a little afraid if he asked and learned what it meant. All the more, because when his mother sang this song he could always see Aunt Rhoda, and she wasn’t at all like anybody else, she was like her name, mysterious and gray. She was very tall, as tall even as his father. She stood near a well on a big flat open place of hard bare ground, quite a way from where he saw her from, and even so he could see how very tall she was. Far back behind her there were dark trees without any leaves. She just stood there very quiet and straight as if she were waiting to be gone and told that the old gray goose is dead. She wore a long gray dress with a skirt that touched the ground and her hands were hidden in the great falling folds of the skirt. He could never see her face because it was too darkly within the shadow of the sunbonnet she wore, but from within that shadow he could always just discern the shining of her eyes, and they were looking straight at him, not angrily, and not kindly either, just looking and waiting. She is worth the saving.
She sang, “Swing low, sweet cherryut, ” and that was the best song of all. “Comin for to care me home.” So glad and willing and peaceful. A cherryut was a sort of a beautiful wagon because home was too far to walk, a long, long way, but of course it was like a cherry, too, only he could not understand how a beautiful wagon and a cherry could be like each other, but they were. Home was a long, long way. Much too far to walk and you can only come home when God sends the cherryut for you. And it would care him home. He did not even try to imagine what home was like except of course it was even nicer than home where he lived, but he always knew it was home. He always especially knew how happy he was in his