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heard a key turn in the lock.
    “I didn’t know there was ere a key would fit hit,” Ringo said, “let alone turn.”
    “And that’s some more of yawl’s and Joby’s business,” Louvinia said. She had not stopped; she was already reclining on her cot and as we looked toward hershe was already in the act of drawing the quilt up over her face and head. “Yawl get on to bed.”
    We went on to our room and began to undress. The lamp was lighted and there was already laid out across two chairs our Sunday clothes which we too would put on tomorrow to go to Memphis in. “Which un you reckin she dremp about?” Ringo said. But I didn’t answer that; I knew that Ringo knew I didn’t need to.
2.
    We put on our Sunday clothes by lamplight, we ate breakfast by it and listened to Louvinia above stairs as she removed from Granny’s and my beds the linen we had slept under last night and rolled up Ringo’s pallet and carried them downstairs; in the first beginning of day we went out to where Loosh and Joby had already put the mules into the wagon and where Joby stood in what he called his Sunday clothes too—the old frock coat, the napless beaver hat, of Father’s. Then Granny came out (still in the black silk and the bonnet as if she had slept in them, passed the night standing rigidly erect with her hand on the key which she had produced from we knew not where and locked her door for the first time Ringo and I knew of) with her shawl over her shoulders and carrying her parasol and the musket from the pegs over the mantel. She held out the musket to Joby. “Here,” she said. Joby looked at it.
    “We wont need hit,” he said.
    “Put it in the wagon,” Granny said.
    “Nome. We wont need nothing like that. We be inMemphis so quick wont nobody even have time to hear we on the road. I speck Marse John got the Yankees pretty well cleant out between here and Memphis anyway.”
    This time Granny didn’t say anything at all. She just stood there holding out the musket until after a while Joby took it and put it into the wagon. “Now go get the trunk,” Granny said. Joby was still putting the musket into the wagon; he stopped, his head turned a little.
    “Which?” he said. He turned a little more, still not looking at Granny standing on the steps and looking at him; he was not looking at any of us, not speaking to any of us in particular. “Aint I tole you?” he said.
    “If anything ever came into your mind that you didn’t tell to somebody inside of ten minutes, I dont remember it,” Granny said. “But just what do you refer to now?”
    “Nummine that,” Joby said. “Come on here, Loosh. Bring that boy with you.” They passed Granny and went on. She didn’t look at them; it was as if they had walked not only out of her sight but out of her mind. Evidently Joby thought they had. He and Granny were like that; they were like a man and a mare, a blooded mare, which takes just exactly so much from the man and the man knows the mare will take just so much and the man knows that when that point is reached, just what is going to happen. Then it does happen: the mare kicks him, not viciously but just enough, and the man knows it was going to happen and so he is glad then, it is over then, or he thinks it is over, so helies or sits on the ground and cusses the mare a little because he thinks it is over, finished, and then the mare turns her head and nips him. That’s how Joby and Granny were and Granny always beat him, not bad: just exactly enough, like now; he and Loosh were just about to go in the door and Granny still not even looking after them, when Joby said, “I done tole um. And I reckin even you cant dispute hit.” Then Granny, without moving anything but her lips, still looking out beyond the waiting wagon as if we were not going anywhere and Joby didn’t even exist, said,
    “And put the bed back against the wall.” This time Joby didn’t answer. He just stopped perfectly still, not even looking back at