Bess won’t take another step. Frank coaxes her from the wagon bench, but she snorts and stamps a hoof. “Come on, girl, giddap,” he says. He reaches for the switch in the wagon bed and holds it by her eye, but the mule makes no attempt to move, and Frank’s not going to whip her. He draws a callused hand over his face, then puts the switch aside and climbs back down from the wagon. He tries leading her next, grabbing the reins below the bit and pulling her from the road’s shoulder. At this she whinnies, tosses her head, even makes a move to lower herself to the ground, but she’s held up by the shaft tugs.
Frank lets go of the reins. He looks at the mule and nods; she is through. Frank thinks he might try to pull the load himself, if he were a younger or a stronger man. He’s got a memory of his son Darryl in the weeks before he went off to Lejeune, his hands around the wagon shafts as he hauled loads of melon, gettin’ himself strong, he said, though Frank reckoned Darryl was strong enough already.
He looks up and down the empty road; there are no headlights, no signs of traffic. Just gravel and the sinking sun. It’s why he’d taken this road in the first place, instead of the busier highway that runs mostly parallel to it, and he wishes now he’d asked for help when he had the chance. The bugs are getting louder with evening, screeching in the cotton. His cousin Earl will be waiting, ready to help him set the stone in place. Elma will be waiting, too. And then there’s Willie; he wants to see his son once more before he dies, even if it’s only from a distance as the boy’s transported from New Iberia to the St. Martinville parish jail. Needs to. His pulse quickens at the thought. Part of him wants to leave the wagon, mule, and stone behind and walk the last few miles back to St. Martinville, just to get back, but as much as Elma likely needs him near as the midnight hour approaches, he knows that she would die to see him empty-handed, after she’s been on him, on him, on him, to go and get their youngest boy a stone. Their youngest boy, born to them so late, both accident and miracle.
He looks once more up the road, down. Nothing. But on the far edge of the next field up he sees the small, dark shape of a cabin. Tenant farmers, he thinks. Could be they have a mule. And there are still hours till midnight; he’s got time.