So I went back to our room alone. And once I was under the covers and the light out, I managed to say the first half of the Lord's Prayer before I slid off into sleep like a plummet and was many miles gone when the door came open and Father stood there in the dark with a lamp.

Lit from underneath as he was, his face was as different as in our childhood when he'd tell us ghost stories, leaning to the lamp to look weird and ghostly.

Not entirely sure it was him, I said "I went to sleep in my prayers--excuse me. I must have been exhausted."

"You can sleep again in just a minute, but can I have a second to tell you something?" The voice was Father's beyond a sane doubt.

I told him "Surely" and moved to the far side to give him room at the edge of my mattress.

He set the lamp on the floor, turned to check that Leela was asleep, then took a seat beside me. Before he said a word, he gently stretched his whole length down outside the cover, lying on his back. Like that he waited so long in silence I thought he'd dozed away.

I took the opportunity to look toward his profile and study its line with the lamplight behind it. He was fifty-five years old and a little overweight. But lying down as he was, his face slimmed remarkably and he looked very little older than the parent I'd always known. Known and loved if love has any meaning in this present time when family love is so suspect and tarnished. If

my father ever did a vicious deed, I never heard of it, though I well know of course that--like all white men of his time in our world--he accepted the local view of black skin.

I'll break my story here to write down something that has mattered to me. If white men in my day did badly by Negroes, white women did worse. Even Muddie, kind in most ways, would ruffle her feathers and rush out hard-eyed at any hint of what she called insubordination in any black soul--male, female or child.

Like most white women of her place and time, our mother patrolled that single boundary sleeplessly. White women in fact ran the whole dark boat of racial hate. They stood at the wheel anyhow. Or was it racial fear? Fear would feel like a stronger candidate to me if I'd ever heard in all my years one single threat any black person made to any one white. The fact that from childhood I silently disagreed with my people's views on most everything connected with color was no great credit to my white soul. I had just been helped and loyally befriended by so many black people, all ages and kinds, that by the age of reason I took their side.

Of course I may have been touched then, as a few other times, by G.o.d's own grace far past my deserts. If so I'm compelled to add that again, and to my permanent shame, I took the sizable gift in silence and barely hinted by so much as a syllable how wrong I thought my dear family were, how close to h.e.l.l fire not to speak of our church, our teachers, all our kin and every white friend we had. Not that my one voice would have made the least difference to people who'd lost a long war on their own home ground with their empty children watching.

Still a person who feels compelled to judge those older times, from these years later, might ask him or her self what normal-seeming acts of the present--acts we perform with slim sense of blame, like fouling the Earth with the waste of our lives and making more children than the Earth should contain-- will look years hence like felonies and evils. Every soul alive is, right now, engaged in some dark offense against goodness and life but is too blind to see.

So that night, back in mine and Leela's old bedroom, Father seemed to be what he still is in my memory, a cause for grat.i.tude in my heart. And it seemed entirely natural to ask myself in that silence whether I ought to leave him or not. When he still didn't speak there dim beside me, it's what I finally asked him. "You ready for me to go my way?"

He waited longer. "My darling, you very sure it's your way?"

The truth was "No" and I said it plainly. That set him off on another long silence. Finally he said "You know you've asked me to give you away. How can I do that when you're not sure?" He hadn't turned to face me yet, thank G.o.d--I might well have broken.

I said "I'm the one that must live with what I do." Then I half turned to face the line of his forehead, nose and mouth. "Don't you see it that way too?"

He nodded but still didn't turn.

I said "We know Palmer Slade's a fine boy."

Father said "He's a man. You're clear about that?" When I didn't answer Father said "Your mother has explained things to you?"

I knew what he meant. But I couldn't say Yes, though the last thing I wanted was for him to explain now.

Father said "Palmer Slade will be taking from you a thing that you can only give once. You better lie here all night if necessary and convince yourself you want him to have it. If you don't find that you can answer him Yes with a peaceful heart, then tell me at daybreak. I'll call this business off and clear these strangers out of here in no time so you can start over with the life you want and the people who love you."

I had to ask if he could just turn and face me.

He slowly did but then we both were in pitch dark. The lamp that he'd set beside us on the floor was stroking the ceiling but with no reflection onto him or me.

Eventually I spoke to where I guessed his eyes were. "I'll love you more than anybody still."

And he said "Please do." In another dark minute he changed that slightly. He faced the ceiling and again I could see the side of his pale

honest features as he started to say the last thing he knew. "I know it's no longer my right to say it, but you please love me as much as you can." Then he got up and left.

I think I may have slept a total of thirty seconds the rest of the night.

Just after dawn on the day itself, I was offered again the chance my father had held out to me. I was awake in a normal housedress drinking coffee back in the kitchen with Edna, Coy and Muddie. Father was out attending to ch.o.r.es, and Miss Olivia was still in her room. We expected Palmer and Ferny to drive in with Major Slade by ten o'clock. But just before seven old Coy was the first to hear a noise in the yard. She said "Some news coming here. Everybody get braced" and pointed through the wall. By then we'd all heard a loud engine close by, then the sound of it strangling.

I stood to go see, but Muddie stopped me-- "You can't meet the public." She went toward the front door, and I stood waiting just inside the kitchen to hear what I could. I somehow knew a big dark door had opened or shut in all our lives, and here were the messengers.

They were two young boys--one white, one black, neither one more than twelve. They'd driven the Slades' car right through our yard and stopped at the porch. The white boy was Austin Waring. The black boy was Coy's great-grandson Doncey, or so she said. She tended to think everybody was close kin to her someway. Muddie got to them before they knocked. I recognized them by the sound of their voices and could hear every word. As straight off the mark as a bullet from a gun, Austin said "Major Slade has pa.s.sed. They sent us to tell you."

Muddie was stunned but finally said "What exactly do you mean by pa.s.sed?" Everybody on the continent of North America knew what pa.s.sed meant.

But Doncey said "He gone, lady. Gone. Cold as ice in the bed when they found him this morning."

I looked back to Coy.

If she'd heard she didn't turn or pause in her work. Edna was stirring hot milk at the stove and shook her head in sorrow at me.

Coy was still unmoved, surely deafer than I knew.

So I stepped on out into the hall to see better. By then Miss Olivia had heard the voices and, in her bathrobe and long nightgown, come up beside Muddie. Miss Olivia's unbraided hair hung well below her shoulder blades in premature mourning, and her pale lips opened but then couldn't speak. So Muddie faced the white boy and said "Say it again."

Austin said "You tell em again, Doncey. Talk plain."

I couldn't imagine any word plainer than gone--is there one?

Doncey said "Old Major dead in the night. They sent us to tell you."

Miss Olivia said "Had to be another stroke."

Doncey said "They saying it was that. Your boy and Ferny told me."

Miss Olivia said "Why didn't Palmer come here to tell me--Ferny or Palmer?"

Austin said "They're all broke up. It surprised em in the night. They're needing you now."

Miss Olivia turned then as if her eyes had seen me backward through her skull. I was ten yards behind her. She faced the boys, pointed back to me and said "This woman is due to get married at five o'clock today. The last thing Major Slade would want is to stop her now."

She'd never called me a woman before, I was almost sure. I wanted to tell her "Oh no, I'll wait. You go on home." But no sound came.

Miss Olivia stood for a good half minute till she knew her mind--no sign of embarra.s.sment that we were there waiting for her next word. When she knew her mind, she turned back to me--me not Muddie. And over that dim long s.p.a.ce between us, she said "n.o.body down here knows but us and these two boys. We'll keep our own counsel till you're safely on the train and halfway to Washington. Major Slade would have it no other way."

I pointed behind me. "Edna knows too." Muddie said "I'll speak to Edna."

To Miss Olivia I said "But Palmer is all upset quite naturally."

Miss Olivia said "I'll send Palm a letter by these boys now. He'll be here on time."

I remember repeating where I stood This strong woman means to steer my life from here on out. At the time it didn't feel all that hard to bow and accept her. She was so fine to see even there in her nightclothes. And I think I very well may have made a shallow bow before I went on back to my room where Leela was sleeping still, sunk deep. I lay down flat on my bed and felt the shape of my life growing up and around me in the chill air. Something as natural as the tilt of my mind and as hopeless as the will of others to plan my course was running my fate like a child's snow sled on a vertical chute.

As ever the thought didn't feel like something I ought to stand and try to fight down. If you'd asked me then, I'd have probably said "Isn't everybody's life carved out by the hands of a thousand others, not to mention G.o.d?" If you mentioned free will, I'd have probably told you what I thought I believed, though I'd been reared Methodist --there was no such thing. Your only choice is whether to tuck your head and bear what the wind blows toward you or to meet it head-on and still feel your spine snap and all your best features stripped off clean as any peeled green stick of wood. Yet none of that left me any less ready to live through the future and face Palmer Slade if he chose to appear.

Who appeared right then was Miss Olivia. She gave a light tap on the door and stepped in. With Leela asleep she sat on the edge of my bed and whispered "You're not shaken, are you?"

I told her No but I'd miss the major.

She said "When Major was a boy in the cavalry, he learned to step over his best friends blown to bits in his path and do his next duty."

I said "You weren't even born that early." Miss Olivia decided not to treat it as an insult. "You're right as usual but he told me ten thousand and fifty times."

"What did you tell Palmer in that note you sent?"

"The same as I'm now telling you. "Let the dead bury the dead.""

"Miss Olivia, that could sound very cruel to some ears."

She said "Of course it could but the words are from Jesus, not Olivia Slade. I've had to live my life against all doubters. My son

is marrying you this evening. It means that much."

"To whom, please ma'm?"

Miss Olivia knew, as she generally did. "Every soul under this roof here and mine. Maybe to the angels in Heaven and the demons." She ended smiling but I saw she believed herself.

"What if Palmer refuses?"

She said "Palm never refused his mother one thing in his whole life, not till now at least."

By then I'd wondered if today's peculiar events didn't mean that Palmer had lost his courage and was using the major's death as a pretext for stalling and slowly letting me down. But would Ferny have cooperated in the plan? I even said it aloud to Miss Olivia.

Again she spoke like a grand campaigner surveying the line and counting her losses. "Ferny loved old Major more than us all. He'll be genuinely crushed. They'll be here though by midafternoon. You watch my word."

I watched and they were. At a little past three, Miss Olivia met Fern and Palmer in the yard, instructed them not to mention the news and led them on indoors to see us. Leela and Father were in the living room with me, still not knowing of any change, when I faced Palmer. I figured we weren't meant to show any sorrow. I'd got my own eyes under control.

And aside from looking a little drawn, Palmer seemed natural--he was always quiet enough for any setting but a mob. He came and kissed me lightly on the cheek.

I pressed his hand where no one could see. He shut his eyes hard and nodded once.

It was Ferny I was worried about. For the second time in a year, Fern had lost somebody that mattered to him--somebody who'd chosen to lean on him. Ferny had always longed to bear great weight. More than any boy I've ever known, he wanted to carry his load in the world. Even as a child he'd volunteer for tasks that were rightly mine and were hard, and I'm sad to say I used him too often-- hauling tubs of bath water and wood for the tin stove in mine and Leela's room.

Coming on behind Palmer as he did this day, in an old black suit of Lark's that Coy had cut down to fit a smaller frame, Fern looked like a bar of silver so cold it might conceivably

burst into blue flame and blot us all out. I took both his hands, and yes they were icy.

I smiled and said "You been to the North Pole?" He didn't smile but he said "Yes ma'm. I'm still up there. Can you bring me home?"

I told him I'd make every possible effort. Neither Father nor Leela took any hint from that of the death we were hiding.

And the two boys went on back to the kitchen to feed the hunger that follows real sorrow.

I thought it was time I went to mine and Leela's room and got my mind into whatever shape would prove necessary at five p.m. when I'd undertake to change the life I'd always led into something entirely different and longer, a grown woman's job from that hour till death.

Everybody said that Betsy Magee had outdone herself on my long dress. I could see it was lovely, and I bowed to Betsy to say as much as I came up the aisle. But I've always felt that it outdid me too. I've mentioned not considering myself a beauty. And dressed to the nines in solid white, I felt a little like a piece of live bait still twisting on the hook. Take precious me. I look so fine. Even I wasn't spoiled enough, though, to let it interfere with what I wanted and managed to do in the next few minutes. For the first time in my life to that point, I listened closely to the marriage vows; and they sobered me up considerably (not that I'd drunk a drop of spirits).

Those were times, to be sure, when no normal people had the outright gall to write their own private vows, taking or leaving whatever part of the customary words it suited them to say in the face of G.o.d watching and with some long-haired boy strumming his guitar by way of wedding music. Without a trace of visible doubt or silent reservation, I honestly think, Palmer and I said the old hard words. First we said I will when the preacher asked if we'd forsake all others and keep only to each other as long as we both should live. Then we each recited, like far and away the most urgent speech we'd ever make in life, I take thee to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health to love and to cherish till death do us part, according to G.o.d's holy ordinance.

Long years of time would prove, I think, that

we kept our word, give or take short fits of selfishness but no enduring unrepented betrayals so far as I learned.

Yet to this very day I don't understand precisely what I was wondering about at the end of the service when Palmer and I walked down the aisle leaning on each other with me thinking only What were we supposed to mean when we said to have and to hold? What's the real difference between have and hold? And could I manage my end of that bargain? And what would Palmer Slade have to say on the day of his death about such a promise of having and holding?

G.o.d knows he held my body that night in our private compartment on the Washington train. (weeks before he died the major had given us money for what was then called a drawing room on the train.) Considering how more than a year had pa.s.sed since our first touch, and that we had strictly kept to ourselves through the time of mourning, I was still surprised at how little time we spent drawing in that tiny room and how much Palmer hurt me, though nearly every minute he was saying "I'm sorry" or "Pardon, oh pardon."

I still think I was more or less right in believing that all his feverish strength poured straight from his father's death and the pressure on him of hiding that sorrow from most of my family and every wedding guest. So I never cried out or let him hear a word of complaint. And dark as it was, he couldn't see my face.

I did understand that, for this time at least, my body and I were just an occasion for Palmer to calm himself from a shocking loss and maybe a heartbreak. But since I'd known from an early age that people are called on frequently to be the occasion for this or that--to be the mind or body somebody leans on to satisfy a thirst in their head or to bank off of into what comes next in their own fate--I didn't take even the worst of the pain as a personal grievance. I was young enough to be mildly honored that I was the chosen occasion for now. And I won't deny that, whatever Palmer Slade was doing and whoever I was in his mind that night, I was interested right through the whole wakeful darkness.

I'd been half in favor of delaying our trip and burying Major. But Palmer and his mother both said No, if we waited we'd never cut loose and travel, not any time soon. We must go right then while Miss Olivia sent for two