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By Root 2576 0

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