Tilda doesn’t show up to the house the next morning so it falls to Ava to make breakfast. There is plenty to eat in the house. Jedidiah keeps laying hens and he has always raised a couple of hogs for slaughter every year. There is a large vegetable garden behind the house, with corn, tomatoes, onions, okra and string beans in various stages of growth. Working in the kitchen makes Ava think of her mother, gone six years now. Even though Tilda has been with them seemingly forever, Ava’s mother handled most of the cooking and she’d made an effort, not always successfully, to pass along what she knew to Ava. For her part, Ava has always been interested in things outside the house, things of a mechanical nature. She could drive a Model T when she was ten years old.
Her father and Morgan sit at the table while Ava fries sow belly and eggs, and steeps grits in a pot. Jedediah has the weekly Wilkesboro newspaper spread out before him. Morgan is searching the dial on the Philco, seeking the news out of Charlotte. A storm threatens and reception is poor; he gives up as Ezra comes through the back door, having walked over from his house along the ridge. He stops when he sees Ava at the stove.
“Why are you cooking the eggs?”
“Would you prefer them raw?” she asks.
He gives her a look and then sits at the table. He takes a moment to regard the newspaper in his father’s hands. “I don’t know how long we can keep going like this,” he says. “I don’t know how long the country can.”
Jedediah folds the paper and puts it aside. “The wolf is not at our door. There are many out there worse off than us. We have but a few dollars in the bank but this farm will provide for the family. I have faith that in due time Mr. Roosevelt will light our way.”
“Another crooked millionaire,” Ezra says. “He don’t care about us.”
“He’s our president,” Jedediah reminds him.
Ava comes over with a platter of food. “Now, boys, mother never allowed political talk at the breakfast table.”
“Where is that colored woman anyway?” Ezra demands. “It’s her job to cook the breakfast.”
“She didn’t show here this morning,” Jedediah says. “First time in twenty odd years, I believe.”
“I’ll go over there after breakfast,” Ava says. “Could be she’s ailing.”
“Or just plain lazy,” Ezra says. “It’s in their breeding. I read an article about it recently.”
Morgan looks at his brother. “She’s missed one day in twenty years and you’re calling her lazy? I’d hate to see what you’d call industrious.”
Ezra ignores Morgan and tucks into his breakfast. Over the years, he has gotten into the habit of dismissing both Morgan and Ava whenever they confront him, finding it easier to avoid an argument than to engage in one he will only end up losing.
“What about the men who worked for you, father?” Rose asks. “What are they doing now?”
“Some found work through the New Deal,” Jedediah says.
“Not many,” Ezra interjects. “And them that didn’t are not doing well.”
Jedediah turns a tolerant eye on Ezra. “The Lord will provide.”
The statement is meant to end the discussion and it does precisely that. The talk turns to the weather and the new Cary Grant movie showing in town. They have finished eating and are drinking coffee when they hear Tilda’s steps on the back porch. Ava stands up as she enters the kitchen. The housekeeper is trembling like a leaf in the wind and there are tears coursing down her cheeks.
There is no money for embalming, or even for ice to pack the body in, so the funeral is that same afternoon. After lunch, Ava bathes and changes into a black dress she’d last worn to her mother’s funeral. Morgan had left earlier, headed to Charlotte with a few gallons of molasses, hoping to do some wholesale business with the mercantile interests there. He didn’t appear particularly optimistic in this.
Ezra enters the living room as Ava is standing in front of the hall mirror, adjusting her hat.
“Where’s Morgan?”
“Off to Charlotte. He told you that.”
“He did not.”
“Over breakfast.” Ava removes the hat and walks across the room, to a vase filled with tulips. She snaps one at the stem and puts it in the hat band, then goes back to the mirror for another look. Ezra, never overly observant, finally notices how Ava is dressed.
“Where are you going?”
“To the funeral.”
“What funeral?”
“Tilda’s mother died last night,” Ava says. “You might recall her telling us this a few hours ago. Is it possible that you’re getting even more obtuse, brother?”
Ezra ignores the suggestion. “You are not going to a colored funeral in a colored church. Have you lost your mind?”
“I don’t think so,” Ava says. “But then I have long suspected that people who have lost their minds are always the last to know.”
“This is not a joking matter,” Ezra tells her. “Although these days it seems with you that everything is. I suspect that’s the city talking. I forbid you to go to that funeral, sister.”
Ava smiles at the word “city”, and her brother’s audacity in using it. She takes one last critical look in the mirror then turns to retrieve her handbag from the hall table. “When Mother was dying, Tilda sat with her every day for weeks. She slept on a cot in her room. She was there for our mother the times when I wasn’t. The times when you weren’t. Today I’m going to her mother’s funeral.”
Ezra’s lips are tight. He has a habit of trying too hard to make sense of things he can’t understand. “You should never have gone to Chicago.”
“What does Chicago have to do with anything?”
“Come on,” Ezra says. “Everybody knows; your kind of thinking is epidemic up north. The Jews and the intellectuals and the likes. Who are you to upset the order of things?”
“Who am I to upset the order of things? I had no idea I possessed such power. Tell me though—what order of things?”
“It’s very simple. God did not intend whites and coloreds to intermingle. That’s a natural fact. You did not see goats intermingling with horses, for instance. You do not see squirrels and rabbits living together.”
“Those are different species, brother,” Ava tells him. “You have a problem with color. But I recall seeing a white horse once having a very good time in a pasture field with a black horse. God didn’t see fit to intervene that day.”
“That is disgusting. I shudder to think what father would think if he was to hear you say that.”
“You’re the one that brought God into it,” Ava says. “But it appears to me of late that God is more diplomatic than that. What I see is a God who has decided to bestow upon all people, regardless of color, the gifts of hunger and poverty and despair.” She walks to the door then looks back. “Why he is doing that is another question altogether. Wouldn’t you agree, brother?”
Outside she goes down the steps and heads out on the dusty red road leading into Darkytown. The Baptist church is just a few hundred yards away, a low-slung log building with a crude steeple fashioned from pine limbs. From all around, people are streaming from their houses, all heading to the funeral. Colored people.
There are a few white households along the way, inhabited mostly by families that had worked for the Flagg family over the years. Now a handful of people come out on their front steps, watching Ava as she walks. Apparently Ezra isn’t the only one concerned with her upsetting the natural rhythm of things. Ava ignores their looks and walks on, her gaze fixed on the church house down the road.
She feels his presence beside her before she sees him. He is dressed in his best frock coat, wearing a wide-brimmed hat.
“You look beautiful today, daughter.”
She slides her hand through her father’s arm. “So do you, old man.”