Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully lived in the same house Pauline lived in, but in opposite sides. So it was Aunt Ca’line who told me what happened. She said she and Pa Bully were sitting out on the gallery that night, and Pauline and Tick-Tock were sitting on the gallery on Pauline’s side. Pauline sat in a chair by the door, and Tick-Tock, who had just come there a few minutes before, was sitting on the end of the gallery with her back against a post. There were mosquitoes that night. Aunt Ca’line was fanning them away with a piece of white rag (her special mosquito rag) and Pa Bully was using his old felt hat. Pauline had a white rag, too (maybe a diaper), and Tick-Tock had a piece of pasteboard. Every now and then Aunt Ca’line could hear the pasteboard hit against Tick-Tock’s leg or her arm.
The second bell had rung for church, and Aunt Ca’line could see people passing by the gate on their way to prayer meeting. She tried to remember the last time she had been to church. She even mentioned it to Pa Bully. (She didn’t call him Pa Bully, she called him Mr. Grant. And he called her Miss Caroline instead of Aunt Ca’line like the rest of us did.) She told him old as they were they ought to be in church. They were going to die soon, she said, and it wouldn’t look right for people to sing and pray over them in their coffins when they hadn’t been to church in so long a time. “You right there,” Pa Bully said. “Yes. Yes.” But even when he was saying it, Aunt Ca’line knew Pa Bully wasn’t going into any church. He hadn’t been inside of a church in twenty-some years.
Aunt Ca’line had been listening to the singing in the church only a few minutes when she saw somebody coming up the walk. She didn’t know who it was until he spoke.
“Miss Pauline Guerin live here?” he said.
Aunt Ca’line looked at Marcus but didn’t answer him. Pauline heard him asking about her but she didn’t even turn her head. It was quiet for nearly a minute. Tick-Tock slapped at a mosquito on her arm, then it was quiet for nearly another minute. Marcus still hadn’t moved. Aunt Ca’line said it looked like he wasn’t going to ever move, so she motioned toward Pauline across the way.
Marcus started up the steps and went back down. Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully had this barb-wire fence that came up on the gallery all the way to the wall. The fence was brought up there, according to Aunt Ca’line, to keep Pauline and Bonbon’s two little mischievous mulattoes on their side. But putting the barb-wire fence up there was like putting nothing there. The two little boys had ridden the fence so much, a grown person could step over it without touching a strain of wire.
But one look at the fence, and Marcus changed his mind and went back out the yard. A second later Aunt Ca’line saw him coming back up Pauline’s walk.
“Miss Guerin,” he said.
Pauline didn’t speak and Marcus sat on the steps. It got quiet again. Every now and then Aunt Ca’line would swing her mosquito rag at a mosquito singing round her ear. Pa Bully had put away his hat for his pipe now, and Aunt Ca’line could hear the soft sucking on the cob pipe and then see a little stream of smoke every time Pa Bully heard or even felt a mosquito might be heading his way.
“Mr. Grant,” Aunt Ca’line said, warningly.
Because, according to Aunt Ca’line, she had caught Pa Bully cutting his eyes toward the other side of that fence where they had no business going.