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By Root 2577 0

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