At last Mally said "Too late, don't you think?"

"Too late for what?"

"You bound to know it would stop Harley's heart if his wife come up with a nut-brown sister. August's wife would take to her bed, even far off as Rockingham; and those Shiflets of hers

way up in Virginia would be jumping off bridges. Dinah might even disrespect her dead father. And what'll Rox think, even old as she is, if old brown Mally turns into her auntie?"

"They've all had to deal with rough turns in the road. They'd likely survive."

Mally said "You think that's me--a rough turn?" "Maybe more like a cliff," I said. "Nothing wrong with a cliff--stand high up and see the whole world." By now my thin blood had warmed and waked me.

But Mally stood. "Let me put you to bed before you keel over."

I'd had to pay such strict attention to my own little bits and pieces of business since Palmer died that my mind didn't want to quit tonight with a big outstanding question on my plate. And I told her as much. "Mally, you know I won't sleep ten seconds if you'll be truly left out when I die."

"Say pa.s.s, Roxanna. Don't never say die." Old Southerners, all colors, avoid the word die in all its forms.

By then I could see that Mally was the tired one. Her whole face was almost ashy with exhaustion. She'd come a long way in the last half hour. So I said "Pa.s.s, pa.s.s" just to ease her mind. And then I said "Let's settle this tomorrow."

"If we both alive tomorrow," Mally said. But she laughed again. Whatever else has been battered in her life, Mally's laugh has stayed as sweet as any creek in the heart of the woods back in our girlhoods when water was clean. Even with her under my own roof, I've often woke up in the midst of the night and wished I had a whole tape of her laugh to haul me up out of fearful dreams.

I say my roof. That night after Mally had helped me put my aching bones to bed, I thought till I saw my own way clear to who would own this roof when I left it. I thought I could make my way the right way for all involved. I still think I have. Mally and I had watched the three tenors on a Sat.u.r.day night. On Monday morning I shut my door and called the lawyer that Palmer had trusted in Henderson. I'd dealt with him several times since Palmer died.

He was Charles Rose, well on in his

eighties and dressed accordingly but practicing hard and, according to all reports in the paper, still saving unlucky boys at the final moment from Death Row in Raleigh and redeeming women from the h.e.l.l of vicious mates, in addition to winning every land fight any of his clients ever entered. On the phone I told Mr. Rose a little of what I had in mind. Right off he said he'd drive out to see me the next afternoon. Good as his word he was there on the minute.

Mally had never seen him before, but on my instructions she brought him into the parlor and left us there. I asked Mr. Rose to shut the hall door (i didn't recall it ever being shut). And then I told him the true details so far as I knew them. I went so far as to say I was sure Mally had to be Palmer's offspring and that I wanted a hidebound will that no one could break with an iron crowbar. Till then I'd just had a short handwritten will leaving everything equally to August and Dinah. The new will, though, would leave this house to Mally Shearin plus a third of the proceeds of selling those gold coins that Palmer left and I'd never had to touch.

I told Mr. Rose I meant to explain it to my children before I signed. They would get their favorite pieces from my own belongings-- furniture, souvenirs, a few small pieces of family jewelry. Through the years the children and I had sold off the old Slade place to pay local bills. But I still owned a fair amount of good timber land. How did a lawyer think I should handle that?

Mr. Rose said "Dear lady, you sure about this? Can Mally Shearin, if that's a legal name, prove her paternity?"

"It's my word," I said.

"Ah, dear madam, time has grown teeth since you and I were young. Your children could at least try to shred any will that leaves their father's property to an outright stranger, not to mention a Negro, mulatto or not."

It had been many years since I'd actually heard anyone say the word Negro. He p.r.o.nounced it the way Martin Luther King and all the rest of us used to--Nigra (today that p.r.o.nunciation is considered an insult). But I told Mr. Rose that my children were, none of them, broke. "They'll agree to my wishes when they know the reason."

Mr. Rose then set in explaining various ways to handle the rights to the timber land. It confused me of course till he said he could simply set up a trust that would hold the land itself and divide the proceeds from timber sales in an equitable way amongst legal claimants. He thought the trust should include all the children and any grandchildren. With August and Dinah, Olivia Roxanna and August's two boys plus Mally Shearin that made six portions of equal size.

I told him it sounded fair to me.

He urged the blood test on me again for Dinah and Mally (or August and Mally if Dinah objected). He could arrange it in absolute privacy anytime we wanted at a laboratory in Raleigh.

I told him that I'd very much enjoyed relying on my own instincts for nine decades and meant to do so still. No blood test would be necessary. I trusted my eyes to recognize Palmer Slade in all his leavings.

Mr. Rose had heard me out calmly. Now a great smile took his whole broad face and nearly shut his eyes that are morning glory blue.

It didn't bother me but I did ask him what was funny.

He said "I'm compelled by human decency to tell you that you'll be paying me a fair amount of money to draft you a will and a trust agreement that may not keep out the gentlest spring rain once you and I are gone. Are you prepared for that?"

I told him I understood precisely, had never expected guarantees from life and that he should proceed.

He opened his briefcase and shuffled through a fi/l of Palmer's old papers as though they might contain some form of rescue. Nothing apparently. He faced me, grinned again and shrugged his wide shoulders. Then he said he'd start drafting the will tomorrow but suggested that I not tell a soul till we'd signed and sealed it. Then if anybody pouted once I was underground, the courts would no doubt sort out the claims as they generally did.

I told him I doubted any such eventuality.

Mr. Rose laughed, said he'd pray for us all and then finished up "With your leave, madam, I'll strain to hang onto life itself to defend

your wishes in any such feud."

I laughed too and told him that his far greater youth was why I'd called on him and no other.

Despite the lawyer's warning I disobeyed him in one respect as I'd warned him I would. That night I wrote the following note and copied it six times in crystal clear script--

Dearest Children and Grandchildren, If this comes as a shock, you will learn to live with it.

Your father and grandfather, Palmer Slade, is also the legal blood father of Mally Pittman Shearin whom you all know and have every reason to feel grateful to for her flawless kindness to Olivia Slade, Dinah Slade Beecham and to me, your mother.

I am ninety-four years old as you know so well; and I know the above to be a firm fact, though Mally never received a cent from Palmer nor me, beyond her earned wages. In preparing my last will and testament, I have chosen to do the only fair thing by my own lights and by G.o.d's above. Mally will get an equal portion in all Palmer Slade's remaining land and timber. And since each of you has your own house, or will never think of living again this deep in the country, my house will be Mally's as well along with a share of other things I possess.

I have thought this through and am sure you will agree. Please make each of yourselves a copy of this letter, sign your name at the bottom in real ink (no ballpoint-mess that will fade), have a witness sign and date it in the presence of a notary and send it back to me post haste.

Your loving and earnest, Roxanna Dane Slade

Within ten days I had all the answers and everybody signed to indicate agreement--not a word of complaint, though I'll never be certain that everybody's happy with my settlement. n.o.body said that they were or weren't. I mailed the signed agreements directly to Lawyer Rose, he drew up the final draft of the will, Simon carried me out to the car in his arms--still strong enough to bear me in his own late eighties (my old hollow bones barely tip the scales now).

Long as I'd known him, and good as he'd been

through sun and hail, we were more than halfway to our destination before I could make myself face Simon's profile and say "Who is Mally Shearin's real father?" The words were scarcely out before I prayed he didn't know or wouldn't answer somehow.

He drove a good while and never turned toward me, but he finally said "You don't want me putting my old mouth on your family business."

I said "You've never lied to me yet." "No ma'm," Simon said. "That far, you right. But you ain't asking me to say wrong or right. You asking me to guess what happened in the night long ages past."

It sounded as if we were talking about the tombs of the pharaohs, and I had to smile. But I said "I'd respect your opinion as always if you'd let me hear it."

But through another silence Simon showed no trace of a smile nor any temptation to say a word further. The strong right wall of his face gave me nothing. He was plainly pretending I hadn't said a syllable more.

So in another minute I let myself believe this was wisdom from a careful old friend or, if not wisdom then at least good sense in drawing no lines in the air between us--lines we neither one could ever forget nor maybe forgive. In ten more minutes we'd covered the few miles left to Henderson.

And there on Garnett Street in an office like something from a silent movie version of a lawyer's office in the wild-west days, I signed three copies of the hopeful arrangement. Two young dyed-hair secretaries stood by to witness my sanity, and Lawyer Rose looked both proud and anxious to have finished our business. At the moment I thought he looked like a president signing the peace to end a great war--his face still knew everybody concerned was armed to the teeth. But once I was safely back in the car, I told myself my wish would prevail.

The whole way home with Simon telling me some long story about his oldest boy in prison and how he's becoming a mail-order preacher while the eldest daughter is moving up the rungs as a social worker down in Savannah, I felt I'd shucked off a burden that had been on my back for seventy-two years.

In the depths of my mind, I'd carried that load every day of my life since I learned that Palmer had a Negro woman in addition to me. Now I'd set it down on the ground on the literal Earth. It felt truly splendid to do one more thing that had some weight before I depart. I hadn't really done a thing that mattered since Dinah's last weeks before Rox's birth. So there beside Simon I felt even lighter than I am on the scales, which is practically airborne. Hereafter, which is where I'll be soon enough, I can only trust in whatever decency I managed to press into my two children and their live descendants. I'd estimate they're decent enough to do what they promised. But old as I am who am I to know?

I thought I'd reached the end with that sentence. Reading through the whole story now days later, though, I feel I owe--owe who? G.o.d only knows-- a few last ownings-up and corrections. Now that all those memories have cooled, what bothers me most in the pages above is how chilly I feel as a human being but especially as a wife and mother. Maybe that feeling is truer than I think. Maybe there's a deep core of chill down in my brain as a part of whatever made me subject to the killing blues till I was nearly fifty years old and had to fling myself from a car and crush my skull before I was more like a normal person.

But I owe it to myself to say in all honesty that when I was well I loved Palmer Slade like the night wind in summer. I loved August and Dinah as much as any mother I've watched has loved and attended to the voices of her children. It's only fair to complete the truth and say that, like a fair number of aunts and grandmothers, I loved my nephew (leela's son Wilton) and Dinah's Rox even more if that's possible. And I wouldn't swear on anyone's Bible that I haven't come to treasure Mally Shearin as highly as any other soul. I say treasure since she wouldn't let me use the word love on her behalf.

The other night she was in my room. We were watching some television story about love and how it drove everybody wild from ants in the ground to the finest old-money billionaires in Newport. And when I was almost sick from the TV sweetness,

Mally turned to me with the gravest face and said "Love is just what you feel till you get to know the person."

I laughed. So did she. But late in the night, I thought she'd got hold of one big secret. A secret that runs the early lives anyhow of way too many people. By love of course I take it that Mally meant romance and pa.s.sion. As I've said, Mally and I have never discussed her relations with pa.s.sion. I, though, have always been short on romance. That and pa.s.sion were more in Leela's line from the start.

I could never quite manage to rouse myself sufficiently to dust a person with gold in my head and stand there and wait for the sun to adore him. Much as I liked the presence of Larkin the day I was twenty, he never seemed anything like a G.o.d till he came in that vision after his death. And though I enjoyed his brother Palmer's face and limbs as much as any white girl of my time could--more so than most--I always felt he was needier than me which prevents awe and worship.

So whether I loved my kin sufficiently will have to be decided by them. And who has ever felt loved enough? As I said the only thing resembling a complaint I ever heard from Palmer was the news of his woman. I grant that once August got himself back from the Second War and cleared his head, he streaked right off to the farthest edge of the state and has only visited three times a year except in emergencies. That may have been a silent comment on his mother. I've also considered whether or not my failures with Dinah, when I was not there for so much of her youth, somehow caused her a few years later to seek out Harley too soon and start a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child just for something to hold that was warm and could talk back dependably.

If such was the case, then I think I can say that--since the last days of Dinah's pregnancy --she and I have been as close as we ought to be, very dear to each other. Dinah's not one of those in-bondage daughters who has to phone her mother five times a day and get permission to wash a lettuce leaf or say the word No to any live man. I know women who can't sleep at night till they've had a long talk with their mother or daughter about what each one served for supper and how the family liked it.

But I've never once doubted I mattered to Dinah as much as anybody except her husband

and child, and isn't that exactly what Christ intended when he gave his opinion that a man must leave his father and mother and cleave to his mate? I a.s.sume he spoke for men and women --he usually did or so I believe.

Wilton has gone his way in the world to Boston where he works in art design and has a wife who can scarcely speak her name for shyness. But he sends me fairly regular pretty things he's drawn--mainly trees and clouds (i spend a mint on frames)--and he calls me monthly, every first Sunday of his life.

Rox has generally lived closer by with a few jaunts away after one man or another. It's especially hard to believe that she's over forty now. She's had a difficult time in her dealings with the world outside her own room, especially the male half. She's come much nearer than anybody else in the family to inheriting the melancholy that I likely inherited from my own mother. Rox has never sunk as deep in the dumps as I went at my worst, though she's suffered greatly and had whole years of her life bent double by that same dark arm clamped over her mouth and aiming to kill her. It's led her to drink far more than was wise and to seek, in men, some reward that's not to be found in other humans of whatever age and s.e.x.

Still she's had a good doctor in recent years and been on helpful medication as well, and now she's living with her third official husband. I once asked her why she had to marry every man that spent the night with her. Couldn't they just keep on staying as friends or whatever without the legal papers? Her answer was "I'm your granddaughter, darling. That's a real load to bear." I'm not altogether sure what she meant, but I left it alone and am still doing so. None of Rox's three spouses could be accused of having good sense, but this latest one seems at least to respect her. It's been more than a year since she's come by my house wearing dark gla.s.ses to hide a bruised eye.

The other grandchildren--August and Daisy's two boys--were so scarce in their childhood that I never really got to know them, and now they're past grown too. That was their mother's choice, and I never fought it. Now both of them send me a Mother's Day card with the names of all my great-grandchildren on it. Between the two of them, there are five offspring. With a

few minutes' warning, I can call the children's names. But as far as feeling close, we're frankly as distant as continents. Well-wishing continents but far out of sight. They've had their mother's mother to love them, I very much hope.

I've said before that in my generation women's lives ended when their husbands died and their children scattered. Then they either went quietly crazy with loneliness and slugs of cooking sherry, or their minds dissolved in premature senility in front of a TV showing Perry Como all hours of the day. Or they got obsessed with their poor grandchildren, carrying pictures of them everywhere and boring kind strangers, not to mention the children. I've literally never known a white woman from a self-respecting family, born back when I was, who got herself a useful paying job when her husband pa.s.sed. I'm sure there've been some, but I never met them.

The ones I've known were kept by their children or by old-age a.s.sistance or they died in what used to be called the County Home, a polite name for the Poor House. And of all that number, I don't know more than two who've offered to donate so much as ten minutes a week to the homeless and desperate. My kind of woman--here in my homeplace and always claiming to be a sworn Christian--has seldom borne the least resemblance to Mother Teresa in any connection outside her own family. I include myself in that sad majority.

I know that's been a practical tragedy for a great many of us, and again I don't exempt myself from judgment. I've outlined the few achievements I'm even half proud of since Palmer died when I was fifty-two. With the limited education I had, there was very little in my part of the world that a woman could have done in the way of honest jobs but stay home and clip her inheritance coupons and wait for her Social Security check like light from G.o.d.

In my little town to this late day, there are still no hostels for the dazed and hungry. The nearest was in Henderson and since I don't drive I couldn't get there to make jelly sandwiches and smile at the wretched. I'm not making fun. Far from it--I know there are saints alive on the Earth and I'm not one. But neither is anybody else known to me. So here I've sat in what

has amounted to more than four decades of talking to myself. If that hasn't driven me crazy for the last time, I doubt G.o.d could (in any case I never got truly low again).

And speaking of crazy, Rox and Dinah sometimes have wondered aloud in my presence if the biggest part of my trouble in life didn't come from the simple fact of being a woman, a held-down woman with insufficient air to breathe and all but no roads to take that hadn't been trod by every woman since Eve at least. Because I honor my female kin, I've tried to give them honest answers. But I'm afraid they aren't highly satisfied with my honest claim that No, in my particular case I don't think my womanhood has been any sizable curse. Oh I can recall whole days of my childhood when I was half sick because my older brother could do something or go somewhere forbidden to me. There were even doors open to poor young Ferny that I envied and sometimes dreamt of walking through.

But as my brothers grew up on either side, and I watched my father support us the best he could by working thirty hours a day nine days a week, I had fewer and fewer opportunities for self-pity. I can say now a big thing that I knew then but held in silence. I had by birth a keener mind than any of theirs, and I'd taken more pains to soak up the little our country school offered. Leela could have said the same and frequently did.

Anyhow by the time I pledged my life and obedience to Palmer Slade, I was on the way to being equipped with eyes that saw how few real privileges he or any other man could flaunt at me. Again it may have been because I loved him so steadily that--more often than not, when I'd felt overburdened to the point of screaming--I'd notice some way Palmer had moved his exhausted eyes at supper or stroked his worn wrist, and I'd wind up sorrier for him than me. Or at least as sorry.

Which is not to say that I think modern women in America have been at all wrong by asking in no uncertain terms for absolute fairness in money and all else, wherever they work, and for more dignified attention from the men in their path (not to speak of the hope that no man will ever even touch a woman or

child again in anger, not to mention uncontrolled desire). All things being equal I also think women should get to be Marines or public executioners or any other hard jobs available to men that they might want.

I suspect, though, that when they've won those positions they'll probably need to grow suddenly blinder. I've mentioned that most human beings in my world have seemed to be blind for the greater part of their waking hours, but the men of my acquaintance have been blind for more of their time than the women. I still don't know why, maybe just because most children are entrusted to women's care. Men's feelings are just as complicated as ours; they just walk past them more often than not. But that hasn't made me want the steady presence of a few men any less in the midst of my life.

I realize as well that if I'd had different early chances for college, say, and jobs outside the kitchen and bed--yes, I might have won the n.o.bel Prize by now and be on TV hourly admired by the children of the Earth and receiving huge boatloads of praiseful mail for having learned how to keep hate out of young minds. (when I think of the hate that boils in young men now and many young girls--I know how much they've borne from their fathers, yet I also know you can say one true thing about every human--they each had a mother or some woman who raised them.)