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talking. And she would have on white gloves and a hat with a veil, and if the weather was the least bit cool she would have a fox or a mink fur piece around her neck and her hands stuck into a fur muff with every hair standing on end. And she would be sitting straight up like a queen in a picture, in reference strictly to herself.
    Driving her would be Willard Safely, of the black branch of the Hargrave Safelys, wearing a black coat and an official little black chauffeur’s cap, Willard being a whole nuther item of interest himself. When he wasn’t wearing his black coat to be Miss Charlotte’s chauffeur, he would be her butler or table waiter wearing a white coat. His wife, Bernice, was Miss Charlotte’s cook and housemaid, always starched and white and waiting to be told what to do next. Willard’s life was in a way glorious, for who else anywhere around drove such a car? But it was difficult too, and notjust when Miss Charlotte joined forces with Bernice in regard to several of his pleasures. I know some of what I know, not just from Grover, but also from Wheeler.
    I don’t mean to give you the idea that Wheeler Catlett went around gossiping about his clients. But when his boy Andy got big enough to be some account at work, he would tell us things. At that age, Andy wasn’t always on the best of terms with his father, but he enjoyed Wheeler’s knowledge and his language. So when we were all together at work and the stories would get started, Andy sometimes had good things to pass along. It’s a mystery how the voices gather. Our talk at row ends or in the barn or stripping room would call up the voices of the absent and the dead. Somebody maybe would wonder what old Uncle Bub would think of Miss Charlotte, and though we never knew him and he never knew her he would say about her what he said about everybody of wonder. “Hell and dammit, boys! She’s a ring-tailed twister!” About everybody knew of Miss Charlotte and took some interest in her. She was surrounded, you might say, with observation. And of course also, as Wheeler said, with her own glitter.
    Grover said he could tell when she was coming because first he would see Willard in his chauffeur’s cap driving around the corner of the rock fence along the driveway and then, well behind him, Miss Charlotte would come into sight in the back seat. They would drive up in front of the feed barn. They would look around. If they didn’t see Grover, Miss Charlotte would tell Willard to blow the horn, and he would give forth a toot. When Grover appeared, if he did, Miss Charlotte would roll her window down.
    Grover, you would think, might have gone over and leaned down to speak to her at a respectful level through the window, but Grover never felt dressed for the occasion. So he stood back at some distance, requiring her to raise her voice to, as he put it, his level to speak to him, and he would holler back to her. She took herself too seriously to notice that he took her unseriously.
    â€œGrover, are you giving milk regularly to the cats?”
    â€œYes mam, Miss Charlotte.”
    â€œGrover, you aren’t looking well. Are you well?”
    â€œI was feeling pretty well, Miss Charlotte, but I got over it.”
    â€œI see you have a nice automobile, Grover,” she said once, pointingto one of Grover’s semi-wrecks that he said would roll down any hill it couldn’t pull up. “What kind is it?”
    â€œA small Packard, Miss Charlotte.”
    Grover liked that remark so well that every old car he had from then on he always called it a small Packard.
    But maybe more often than she came, Miss Charlotte would send Willard by himself. When she sent Willard it was usually with a message she didn’t want to deliver in person.
    Neither one of them ever said so, but Willard and Grover saw eye to eye on a lot of things. They enjoyed a lot of the same pleasures without ever so much as a look or a