At sundown they’re still several miles from St. Martinville when Bess shows signs of tiring, slowing her gait at just the time Frank would otherwise be inclined to crack the switch by her head. But she is an old mule; they’re both old. It’s hot, too, and already she’s pulled the wagon more miles in a single day than she has in the past month, so he respects her pace, even if he could walk the miles home doubly faster.
“S’all right, girl,” he murmurs, steering her to the side of the road. “Hold up now, whoa.” He tugs back gently on the reins. Bess stops. She blinks slowly, hangs her head, waits.
Frank ties off the reins and climbs stiffly from the bench to the dusty ground. He gets the mule’s feed bucket and a steel canteen from the wagon bed, and he pours out what’s left of their water, leaving barely enough for himself to splash his face. It’s warm, but the water feels good.
Bess lowers her head to drink, but she takes only a sip before pulling away.
“All right, girl.” Frank draws his hands down the mule’s face, the solid nose bone wide and reassuring. “We be home soon enough,” he tells her, looking into her dark eyes. On their surface he can see his own reflection, an old man in his Sunday best.
Frank lifts the bucket and pours the water down the length of the mule’s back, then returns the can and bucket to the wagon bed. There, a simple slab of granite lies across the wooden planks, the day’s somber cargo fetched from over in Youngsville, about eleven miles to the west from his home in St. Martinville. It cost him eighty-five dollars, most of them borrowed against a failing crop of onion and the promise of odd jobs, but his youngest boy’s going to have a headstone if it kills the mule and Frank himself besides. It’ll kill Elma if he doesn’t. She had wanted him to get it sooner, but getting it seemed to Frank an acceptance of the unacceptable, so he put it off, put it off again, and finally decided on this final day to do it because he didn’t know how else he’d fill the hours otherwise. He wouldn’t have been able to bear being home with Elma.
Frank rubs his eyes and looks off into the distance. A white field of cotton stretches away, abuzz with the insects of evening, the bursting hoary bolls aglow. This time yesterday he and Elma were telling the boy good-bye. This time tomorrow he’ll be gone. Even after months of counting down, of measuring the weeks and days until this time, he still can’t fathom it. He figures Elma’s done enough fathoming for them both, mourning the boy before he’s even gone. Though really Frank figures he was gone before his trial had even begun—figured it in fact from the moment he came home and saw Willie sitting there with his back against the mule shed, the girl’s head resting in his lap as the boy ran his fingers through her hair.
In the distance there’s the growing sound of an engine, and when Frank looks down the road behind him he sees a pickup truck barreling in from the west, an outline in a glowing cloud of dust. He goes around again to Bess and grabs her reins just below the bit, to soothe her during the noisy passing. But the pickup doesn’t pass; instead, some yards away from where Frank has stopped on the side of the road, it slows down, then pulls onto the shoulder.
There are two white men in the cab. Frank eyes them warily, though it’s hard for him to see them clearly through the windshield. The passenger side door opens, and a man gets out. He’s wearing boots and denim pants, and a baseball cap perches on his head. He approaches Frank slowly, a hand in his pocket. Frank’s grip tightens around the reins. He squints in the setting sunlight.
“You doin OK?” the man asks.
“Yessuh, just givin the mule some water, suh.”
“Mmmmm-hmm. We seen you pulled over, thought you might have a busted axle or some such.”
“No suh. Just about to be on my way.”
“Where you headed?”
“Over St. Martinville,” Frank says, nodding to the east.
“Be dark ’fore you get there, by the looks of that mule,” the man says, eyeing Bess.
“Yessuh, I reckon it will.”
“Right then.” The man pulls on the brim of his cap and takes a step backward, and then he turns around and goes back to the pickup. He gets inside, and after a moment, the truck pulls into the road and drives away.
Frank watches it disappear in the same direction he will take, his heart galloping from the innate fear he’s wished to God so many times that Willie, too, possessed.