A Death in the Family - James Agee [90]
“No sir, ” Rufus said.
“Well, yer gonna, ” 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