In the fall Lant bought Abner's second-hand Ford car. Piety had begged for a new roof instead.
He said, "I kin make twicet as much money if I got a way to deliver to them city scapers. Then you kin have your roof."
Cleve brought him the car from Abner on a bright November morning. Lant ran to the gate to take possession. He called over his shoulder, "Come on, Ma, git you a ride," and she followed him, untying her gingham apron. The car was dingy and disreputable, but the motor was still good. Lant sat in the driver's seat with pride in the regular explosions. Piety climbed stiffly in the back and examined the worn upholstery with interest. Lant had driven occasionally for Abner and the mechanism was familiar. Cleve grinned at his excitement and slouched down beside him.
"We'll go see Uncle Zeke," Lant said. He added, "A pity Uncle Thad's dead, we could go see him, too."
Piety called loudly from the rear, "Kin go see the ol' place, anyways."
The small leaves of scrub oak and of sparkleberry glinted in the strong sunlight. The car passed Martha's old clearing, where she lay buried with Lantry and Thad and the Jacklin and Lantry infants. The blackjacks there were stained orange and red and cedar-brown by the first frosts. The sky bent down to them as indigo-blue as the quilt-backs Piety and Kezzy had made together. Piety thought a quilt would be pretty in the blackjack colourings, with the oak leaf itself for pattern. But it was lonely, piecing and quilting by herself. They stopped to wave to Zeke, then drove as far as Thad's old clearing and turned around. The cabin was in ruins, and only smilax and trumpet vines held the sides together. The roof slanted over them. More of her kin lay dead in the scrub than moved there alive. Piety was sorry she had come.
She thought, "Seem like makin' a show in front o' the dead."
Lant drove home in a high ecstasy, but she held tight to the frayed seat, her slight figure bouncing on every curve, remembering Thaddeus and Willy and Martha and her father.
Cleve said, "Kezzy said you should carry me home and stay to dinner. She says she cain't wait to see ol' Lant settin' up behind the wheel." He laughed derisively.
Lant said, "I kin be off today. How 'bout it, Ma?"
"Yes," she said decisively, "I want to go. I want to see Kezzy and the baby. He's six months old and I ain't seed him yit. You wait now, I want to take her somethin'."
She started up the fenced-in lane to the house.
"You ain't fitten to go through Eureka," she called to Lant.
He grumbled but gave in. Cleve walked about the yard as they changed their clothes. Piety washed hurriedly in the hand basin and took water to her bedroom to bathe her feet. She put on a grey and white print dress. Her face, thin and seamed, shone like clean polished horn. She put on a high brown straw hat with faded cloth roses on it. She moved quickly and had ready her bundles for Kezzy by the time Lant appeared in a clean blue shirt and grey cotton trousers. His red hair was brushed smooth.
"Now you look fitten," she said.
"Ne' mind the way I look. What-all you takin' to Kezzy?"
He pried into the paper sacks of sweet potatoes, turnip greens and a pan of cold fried squirrel.
"That's a sorry mess."
"Hit's all I got."
He groped through the kitchen safe and passed out a paper-covered glass of grape jelly, a Mason jar of peaches and another of wild honey.
"Them young uns o' hers don't git no sweetenin'," he said.
"Kezzy gives 'em sweetenin'," she said indignantly.
"When Cleve gits it there to give 'em."
Cleve was sulky when they joined him. He had been looking over Lant's belongings, handling the new focussing flashlight and the blow-torch.
"I wisht I could have me sich as this," he said.
Lant said, "All you got to do is work for 'em."
"They ain't no work."
"I'll give you work. Right now. You kin cut ash wood for me ary day you see fit."
Cleve did not answer.
"What you been usin' the blow-torch for?" he asked.
They walked to the car.
"He's been usin' it lately to try and burn the house down," Piety said. "That's jest what he's been a-doin' with it."
"How come?"
"Why, it's the antses," Lant said impatiently. "Them sons o' bitches has got a perfeck trail to the kitchen table. I found out where they was nestin' under the house and I put the blow-torch to 'em, is all."
"And set fire to the under-pinnin's," Piety declared. "Then it was to run with buckets o' water and th'ow sand. And him chasin' the antses with the blow-torch right on. When he take a notion that-a-way, a thing's as good as done time he think of it."
He grinned.
"You ain't woke up since to find them scoundrels kiverin' up the cold biscuits, have you? Well, then. Dogged if it ain't fight to git food, and then fight to keep it."
They drove the dim scrub road, turned to cross the bridge over the river, through Eureka and out the piney-woods road to Kezzy's small rented farm. She put down the new baby and came to meet them. The women embraced in silence. The men walked back of the house to look at the well Kezzy was having dug.
Piety said, "Hit's mighty good to be neighbourin' with you agin, Kezzy. How yuh?"
Kezzy laughed. "Well, we ain't starved to death yit."
"How you come out with your hogs?"
"Aunt Py-tee, they ain't bringin' but four cents a pound. We got a leetle corn left, and I declare hit's better to fatten 'em and kill 'em for lard and not have to buy no compound."
"You mighty right. You got to have grease. A man kin make out without meat but he shore cain't without grease."
"I declare, Aunt Py-tee, times is hard for folks around here. They's talk o' more trouble 'bout the cattle, and them as kep' stock will likely have to sell 'em, and them bringin' not much more'n the hogs. The pore people'll starve when you take the stock away from 'em. They cain't hardly make out as 'tis."
They sat on the rickety porch and Piety held the baby. The two-year boy played around their chairs. Kezzy leaned over and looked closely at the older woman.
"How you feelin', Aunt Py-tee? Your eyes looks bad agin."
"They is. I ain't got but a piece o' sight."
"You'd orter git you some glasses."
"I been to town with Lant one time. I been to the dime store and all over and I couldn't find none to fit."
"Hit's them cataracks, like."
"Must be. I've got to where I'm moon-eyed, Kezzy. I cain't hardly see, day-times, but when the moon's bright I kin see mighty plain."
"Aunt Py-tee, you know I kin hear you, times, acrost the river, callin' your hogs?"
"Kin?"
"I heerd you 'tother evenin' at dusk-dark, standin' at my water-shelf. I said, 'Wisht I could speak to her, pore ol' soul.'"
They rocked back and forth. Wasps buzzed in the clay-daubed rafters overhead. Kezzy rose from her chair and slapped at them.
"Them hateful dirt-daubers!" She dug at one with a stick. "I'll kill him if I kin rout him." She knocked the wasp to the floor, where the child crushed it. He said, "You'll quit totin' mud now!"
Piety said, "I carried you some sweetenin' and some squirrel meat."
"We been eatin' quail," Kezzy smiled. "I don't know what I'd of done for meat thouten my leetle ol' trap. We've got a bait of 'em—we're ready for squirrel." She frowned. "Aunt Py-tee, I'm mighty sorry you're porely."
"I ain't too young, Kezzy."
"You ain't old. You got no white hair to speak of. I'm like to turn white ahead of you."
"Your hair's so dark. Dark-haired people tarnish quicker."
Cleve and Lant came to the porch, talking of the well. Old man Lonny Sours was a well-finder. He had found the spot for digging. He had walked back and forth with a green forked persimmon switch, holding it ahead of him. It had turned down over the hidden water. The bark had twisted in his hands. He had approached the place from all angles to get the exact spot. He had said, "Dig here—here's your water." They expected to bring in the well in another day or two.
"Cain't ever' man find water," Kezzy said. "Ol man Sours has got the gift. He'll tell you to the foot how deep to go. He'll tie a string 'round a two-shillin' piece and lower it easy in a glass o' water and he'll tell you how many feet down your well-water'll lay."
"Where you been gittin' water?"
"Down to Ab's. Been a-totin' it. I catches rain water under the eaves, but the magnolia leaves colours it so's it's hardly fitten."
"How fur's it to Ab's from here?"
"They calls it a mile, but I figgers they measured the road with a 'coonskin, th'owed in the tail ever' lap."
Kezzy was expecting them for dinner and the food was plentiful. If rations would be scanty the rest of the week, she made no sign. She urged on them helpings of rice and home-cured bacon and cow-peas, white bread from the store, and her own cake.
"I do make good lard cake," she admitted.
Lant said, "I wisht you'd made hot bread 'stid o' this wasp's-nest light-bread. Put me some more grease on them swamp-seeds."
"Lant, you're a sight."
"He's a sight," Piety agreed with enthusiasm. "He's a pure sight. Look at him with them peas—he's eatin' nothin' but the soup on 'em."
"He knows what he likes," Kezzy said easily. "Leave him be."
"I wisht I had you cookin' for me, Kezzy," he said. "Hit's a pain to git what I want cooked."
"Now at my house," Cleve drawled, "the trouble is to git it there to cook."
They laughed comfortably.
Cleve said, "Anyways, I sold me a 'gator hide last week. Shot hit on the bank."
After dinner Lant took Kezzy aside.
"You jest ain't makin' out, Kezzy. What-all's Cleve been a-doin'?"
She was evasive.
"Oh—chippin' boxes now and agin."
"That's nigger work," he said. "Turpentinin' don't make a white man no livin'."
"He had a offer to go guardin' to the convict camp."
"Why'n't he take it?"
"Jest someway didn't suit him. Now, Lant, don't you pay us no mind. We'll make out."
"Zeke sent you five dollars, didn't he?"
"Pore ol' Zeke—I'll swear I hated takin' it the worst way."
"If 'twa'n't for Zeke," he said angrily, "somebody'd smell a patch in the fire."
"You ol' snoopy thing, you," she laughed. "You knows too much."
"I ain't meanin' to interfere," he said in alarm. "I offered Cleve work, cuttin' ash wood to burn at the outfit. I jest want to know, do he r'aly want it. I got to have me a piece o' he'p and the work's his if he'll take it."
"He'll take it," she said quietly. "He'll be there Monday-week."
Piety called from the porch.
"We better git goin'."
He started towards the door.
Kezzy laid a hand on his arm.
"Lant, did Cleve tell you about Ardis?"
He stopped.
"Cleve ain't said nothin' about her."
"She got married. A feller from the town they lived in."
A hot wave swept across him, picturing the small body in a stranger's arms. The wave receded.
He said, "Leave her git married."
Ardis was a stranger, too. Kezzy watched him closely. He drew a deep breath. He wanted a rattlesnake against him no more than he wanted the yellow-headed girl. He burst out laughing.
"By God," he said, "I hope she's got her a Prohi."