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idea of going around Cold Spring Holler and seeing what all I could do fer Kate after Moses died, but the pure fact was that Kate died too, finely and factually, when Moses went. The Kate that I had knowed and loved, I mean, that Kate so merry and spiritous, that sung on the porch whilst she churned, and danced with her babes in the yard.
    Kate Malone went plumb outen her head then, hit is sad to say.
    You couldn’t get her to speak a word of sense, she was so busy a-talking with them people in her mind, Moses and Jeremiah and Lord knows who else, and singing little bitty snatches of songs. Sometimes she’d wrap up her head in a shawl, and say the ravens was after her. Sometimes she’d be laughing and laughing. Sometimes she’d shush you, and say the ravens was a-whispering in her ear. Well, hit weren’t long afore they come over here from Cana, some of her daddy’s people, and taken her children away. Seemed like she didn’t hardly miss em, neither. Now they tried to take Kate, too, but she refused to go. She would not leave that cabin.
    I seen Kate one more time afore she died. She’d been a-living all alone fer a year or more, and hit was summer again, jest about dusk, when I walked over there.
    Kate set on the porch in her rocking chair where I had seed her so many times, rocking and singing just like she used to, “Go to sleep, little baby, fore the booger-man gets you! When you wake, you’ll have a piece of cake, and all the pretty little horses . ” Her hair had gone plumb white, but her voice was as sweet as ever. She looked real peaceful.
    â€œKate,” I says. “Hit’s Ira.”
    â€œA black and a bay and a dapple and a gray,” she sung.
    â€œKate Malone!” I says.
    â€œSo go to sleep, little baby,” Kate sung, and I seed hit was hopeless. I don’t think she even knowed me. I left her there whilst the lightning bugs was a-rising from the tall grass that had growed up all around the cabin, and a leetle wind was a-singing through the cedar trees. I thought I heerd a whisper in the breeze. And when I looked back at the cabin from the edge of the forest, I couldn’t even see Kate there on the porch, I couldn’t do nought but hear her, a-singing in the dark.
    I believe I will take a leetle more of that there. Jest a drop, iffen ye don’t mind.—What’d I do? Well, I’ll tell ye.
    I left there that night with my heart like to busting, fer a young man is a sorry wild thing, truth to tell, he don’t even know what he wants, but he wants it so bad hit is like to kill him all the time. Nor did I go home to that good wife of mine. No, I walked down the creek past Bee to Reece Stiltner bottom, where a woman I knowed named Becky Trent lived, and she was glad to see me. She was allus glad to see me. But she weren’t nothing like Kate Malone.
    That’s why hit don’t bother me none to stay up here the way I do now, hit don’t bother me having that hanted cabin acrost the way there. Hell, that fiddle music don’t even bother me, most times. Now I won’t go over there, mind ye, on a bet, but I kindly like to hear that music. Most times hit’ll start up about now, jest about dark, and iffen hit’s a dance tune, why sometimes I’ll lean my head back and close these old eyes and listen, and them times hit’ll seem like I can fair see us, Kate and me together as we never was in life, a-waltzing in the dark.

2
    Ezekiel Bailey
    Small wonder, then, that Zeke grew up so muley-hawed and closemouthed, a big boy with a face as fair and blank as the full moon. It wasn’t that he was obstinate or contrary. It was simply that he had nothing to say. And he could sit still for hours, and not do a blessed thing. It was unnatural. Everybody said so. Zeke was passed around his mamma’s family at Cana like a hot potato, staying with first these cousins, then those cousins, then his lonely old