"Welladay," she said, and popped the last bite of toast into her mouth. She rocked back and forth, drinking her coffee. This was a bright, fine day, and no part of her body was giving her particular misery, and she offered up a brief prayer of thanksgiving for what she had got. God is great, God is good; the littlest child could learn those words, and they encompassed the whole world and all the world held, good and evil.

"God is great," Mother Abagail said, "God is good. Thank You for the sunshine. For the coffee. For the fine BM I had last night, You was right, those dates turned the trick, but my God, they taste nasty to me. Ain't I the one? God is great ..."

Her coffee was about gone. She set the cup down and rocked, her face turned up to the sun like some strange living rockface, seamed with veins of coal. She dozed, then slept. Her heart, its walls now almost as thin as tissue paper, beat on and on as it had every minute for the last 39,630 days. Like a baby in a crib, you would have had to put your hand on her chest to assure yourself that she was breathing at all.

But the smile stayed on.

Things had surely changed in all the years since she had been a girl. The Freemantles had come to Nebraska as freed slaves, and Abagail's own great-granddaughter Molly laughed in a nasty, cynical way and suggested the money Abby's father had used to buy the home place-money paid to him by Sam Freemantle of Lewis, South Carolina, as wages for the eight years her daddy and his brothers had stayed on after the States War had ended-had been "conscience money." Abagail had held her tongue when Molly said that-Molly and Jim and the others were young and didn't understand anything but the veriest good and the veriest bad-but inside she had rolled her eyes and said to herself: Conscience money? Conscience money? Well, Well, is there any money cleaner than that? is there any money cleaner than that?

So the Freemantles had settled in Hemingford Home and Abby, the last of Daddy and Mamma's children, had been born right here on the home place. Her father had bested those who would not buy from niggers and those who would not sell to them; he had bought land a little smidge at a time so as not to alarm those who were worried about "those black bastards over Columbus way"; he had been the first man in Polk County to try crop rotation; the first man to try chemical fertilizer; and in March of 1902 Gary Sites had come to the house to tell John Freemantle that he had been voted into the Grange. He was the first black man to belong to the Grange in the whole state of Nebraska. That year had been a topper.

She reckoned that anyone, looking back over her life, could pick out one year and say, "That was the best." It seemed that, for everyone, there was one spell of seasons when everything came together, smooth and glorious and full of wonder. It was only later on that you might wonder why it had happened that way. It was like putting ten different savory things in the cold-pantry all at once, so each took on a bit of the others' flavors; the mushrooms had a taste of ham and the ham of mushrooms; the venison had the slightest wild taste of partridge and the partridge had the tiniest hint of cucumbers. Later on in life, you might wish that the good things which all befell in your one special year had spread themselves out a little more, that you could maybe take one of the golden things and kind of transplant it right down in the middle of a three-year stretch you couldn't remember a blessed good thing about, or even a bad one, and so you knew that things had just gone on the way they were supposed to in the world God had created and Adam and Eve had half uncreated-the washing had gone out, the floors had been scrubbed, the babies had been cared for, the clothes had been mended; three years with nothing to break up the gray even flow of time but Easter and the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving and Christmas. But there was no answering the ways God set about His wonders to perform, and for Abby Freemantle as well as her father, '02 had been a topper.

Abby thought she was the only one in the family-other than her daddy, that was-that understood what a great, nearly unprecedented thing it was to be invited into the Grange. He would be the first Negro Granger in Nebraska, and very possibly the first Negro Granger in the United States. He had no illusions about the price he and his family would pay in the form of crude jokes and racial slurs from those men- Ben Conveigh chief among them-who were set against the idea. But he also saw that Gary Sites was handing him something more than a chance at survival: Gary was giving him a chance to prosper with the rest of the corn belt.

As a member of the Grange, his problems buying good seed would end. The necessity of taking his crops all the way to Omaha to find a buyer would likewise end. It might mean the end of the water-rights squabble he had been having with Ben Conveigh, who was rabid on the subjects of niggers like John Freemantle and nigger-lovers like Gary Sites. It might even mean that the county tax assessor would stop his endless gouging. So John Freemantle accepted the invitation, and the vote went his way (by quite a comfortable margin, too), and there were were nasty cracks, and jokes about how a coon had got caught in the Grange Hall loft, and about how when a nigger-baby went to heaven and got its little black wings you called it a bat instead of an angel, and Ben Conveigh went around for a while telling people that the only reason the Mystic Tie Grange had voted John Freemantle in was because the Children's Fair was coming up pretty soon and they needed a nigger to play the African orangutan. John Freemantle pretended not to hear these things, and at home he would quote from the Bible-"A soft answer turneth away wrath" and "Brethren, as ye reap so shalt ye surely sow" and his favorite, spoken not in humility but in grim expectation: "The meek shall inherit the earth." nasty cracks, and jokes about how a coon had got caught in the Grange Hall loft, and about how when a nigger-baby went to heaven and got its little black wings you called it a bat instead of an angel, and Ben Conveigh went around for a while telling people that the only reason the Mystic Tie Grange had voted John Freemantle in was because the Children's Fair was coming up pretty soon and they needed a nigger to play the African orangutan. John Freemantle pretended not to hear these things, and at home he would quote from the Bible-"A soft answer turneth away wrath" and "Brethren, as ye reap so shalt ye surely sow" and his favorite, spoken not in humility but in grim expectation: "The meek shall inherit the earth."

And little by little he had brought his neighbors around. Not all of them, not the rabid ones like Ben Conveigh and his half-brother George, not the Arnolds and the Deacons, but all the others. In 1903 they had taken dinner with Gary Sites and his family, right in the parlor, just as good as white.

And in 1902 Abagail had played her guitar at the Grange Hall, and not in the minstrel show, either; she had played in the white folks' talent show at the end of the year. Her mother had been deadset against that; it was one of the few times in her life when she let her opposition to one of her husband's ideas out in front of the children (except by then the boys were damned near middle-aged and John himself had a good deal more than a touch of snow on the mountain).

"I know how it was," she said, weeping. "You and Sites and that Frank Fenner, you whipped this up together. That's fine for them, John Freemantle, but what's got into your head? They're white! white! You go hunker down with them in the backyard and talk about plowin! You can even go downtown and have a spot of beer with them, if that Nate Jackson will let you into his saloon. Fine! I know what you've been through these last years-none better. I know you've kep a smile on your face when it must have hurt like a grassfire in your heart. You go hunker down with them in the backyard and talk about plowin! You can even go downtown and have a spot of beer with them, if that Nate Jackson will let you into his saloon. Fine! I know what you've been through these last years-none better. I know you've kep a smile on your face when it must have hurt like a grassfire in your heart. But this is different! But this is different! This is This is your own daughter! your own daughter! What you gonna say if she gets up there in her pretty white dress and they laughs at her? What you gonna do if they throws rotten tomatas at her like they did at Brick Sullivan when he tried to sing in the minstrel show? And what are you going to say if she comes to you with those tomatas all over the front of her dress and asks, 'Why, Daddy? Why did they do it, and why did you let them do it?' " What you gonna say if she gets up there in her pretty white dress and they laughs at her? What you gonna do if they throws rotten tomatas at her like they did at Brick Sullivan when he tried to sing in the minstrel show? And what are you going to say if she comes to you with those tomatas all over the front of her dress and asks, 'Why, Daddy? Why did they do it, and why did you let them do it?' "

"Well, Rebecca," John had answered, "I guess we better leave it up to her and David."

David had been her first husband; in 1902 Abagail Freemantle had become Abagail Trotts. David Trotts was a black farmhand from over Valparaiso way, and he had come pretty nearly thirty miles one way to court her. John Freemantle had once said to Rebecca that the bear had caught ole Davy right and proper, and he had been Trotting plenty. There were plenty who had laughed at her first husband and said things like, "I guess I know who wears the pants in that that family." family."

But David had not been a weakling, only quiet and thoughtful. When he told John and Rebecca Freemantle, "Whatever Abagail thinks is right, why, I reckon that's what's to do," she had blessed him for it and told her mother and father she intended to go ahead.

So on December 27, 1902, already three months gone with her first, she had mounted the Grange Hall stage in the dead silence that had ensued when the master of ceremonies had announced her name. Just before her Gretchen Tilyons had been on and had done a racy French dance, showing her ankles and petticoats to the raucous whistles, cheers, and stamping feet of the men in the audience.

She stood in the thick silence, knowing how black her face and neck must look in her new white dress, and her heart was thudding terribly in her chest and she was thinking, I've forgot every word, every single word, I promised Daddy I wouldn't cry no matter what, I wouldn't cry, but Ben Conveigh's out there and when Ben Conveigh yells NIGGER, then I guess I'll cry, oh why did I ever get into this? Mamma was right, I've got above my place and I'll pay for it- I've forgot every word, every single word, I promised Daddy I wouldn't cry no matter what, I wouldn't cry, but Ben Conveigh's out there and when Ben Conveigh yells NIGGER, then I guess I'll cry, oh why did I ever get into this? Mamma was right, I've got above my place and I'll pay for it- The hall was filled with white faces turned up to look at her. Every chair was filled and there were two rows of standees at the back of the hall. Kerosene lanterns glowed and flared. The red velvet curtains were pulled back in swoops of cloth and tied with gold ropes.

And she thought: I'm Abagail Freemantle Trotts, I play well and I sing well; I do not know these things because anyone told me. I'm Abagail Freemantle Trotts, I play well and I sing well; I do not know these things because anyone told me.

And so she began to sing "The Old Rugged Cross" into the moveless silence, her fingers picking melody. Then picking up a strum, the slightly stronger melody of "How I Love My Jesus," and then stronger still, "Camp Meeting in Georgia." Now people were swaying back and forth almost in spite of themselves. Some were grinning and tapping their knees.

She sang a medley of Civil War songs: "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," "Marching Through Georgia," and "Goober Peas" (more smiles at that one; many of these men, Grand Army of the Republic veterans, had eaten more than a few goober peas during their time in the service). She finished with "Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp-ground, " and as the last chord floated away into a silence that was now thoughtful and sad, she thought: Now if you want to throw your tomatas or whatever, you go on and do it. I played and sang my best, and I was real fine. if you want to throw your tomatas or whatever, you go on and do it. I played and sang my best, and I was real fine.

When the last chord floated into silence, that silence held for a long, almost enchanted instant, as though the people in those seats and the others standing at the back of the hall had been taken far away, so far they could not find their way back all at once. Then the applause broke and rolled over her in a wave, long and sustained, making her blush, making her feel confused, hot and shivery all over. She saw her mother, weeping openly, and her father, and David, beaming at her.

She had tried to leave the stage then, but cries of "Encore! Encore!" "Encore! Encore!" broke out, and so, smiling, she played "Digging My Potatoes." That song was just a tiny bit risky, but Abby guessed that if Gretchen Tilyons could show her ankles in public, then she could sing a song that was the teeniest bit bawdy. She was, after all, a married woman. broke out, and so, smiling, she played "Digging My Potatoes." That song was just a tiny bit risky, but Abby guessed that if Gretchen Tilyons could show her ankles in public, then she could sing a song that was the teeniest bit bawdy. She was, after all, a married woman.

"Someone's been diggin my potatoes They've left em in my bin, And now that someone's gone And see the trouble I've got in."

There were six more verses like that (some even worse) and she sang every one, and at the last line of each the roar of approval was louder. And later she thought that if she had done anything wrong that night, it was singing that song, which was exactly the kind of song they probably expected to hear a nigger sing.

She finished to another thunderous ovation and fresh cries of "Encore! " "Encore! " She remounted the stage, and when the crowd had quietened, she said: "Thank you all very much. I hope you won't think I am bein forward if I ask to sing just one more song, which I have learned special but never ever expected to sing here. But it is just about the best song I know, on account of what President Lincoln and this country did for me and mine, even before I was born." She remounted the stage, and when the crowd had quietened, she said: "Thank you all very much. I hope you won't think I am bein forward if I ask to sing just one more song, which I have learned special but never ever expected to sing here. But it is just about the best song I know, on account of what President Lincoln and this country did for me and mine, even before I was born."

They were very quiet now, listening closely. Her family sat stock still, all together near the left aisle, like a spot of blackberry jam on a white handkerchief.

"On account of what happened back in the middle of the States War," she went steadily on, "my family was able to come here and live with the fine neighbors that we have."

Then she played and sang "The Star-Spangled Banner," and everyone stood up and listened, and some of the handkerchiefs came out again, and when she had finished, they applauded fit to raise the roof.

That was the proudest day of her life.

She stirred awake a little after noon and sat up, blinking in the sunlight, an old woman of a hundred and eight. She had slept wrong on her back and it was a pure misery to her. Would be all day, if she knew anything about it.

"Welladay," she said, and stood up carefully. She began to go down the porch steps, holding carefully to the rickety railing, wincing at the daggers of pain in her back and the prickles in her legs. Her circulation was not what it had once been ... why should it be? Time after time she had warned herself about the consequences of falling asleep in that rocker. She would doze off and all the old times would come back and that was wonderful, oh yes it was, better than watching a play on the television, but there was hell to pay when she woke up. She could lecture herself all she liked, but she was like an old dog that splays itself out by a fireplace. If she sat in the sun, she went to sleep, that was all. She no longer had a say in the matter.

She reached the bottom of the steps, paused to "let her legs catch up with her," then hawked up a goodish gob of snot and spat it into the dirt. When she felt about as usual (except for the misery in her back), she walked slowly around to the privy her grandson Victor had put behind the house in 1931. She went inside, primly shut the door and put the hook through the eye just as if there was a whole crowd of folks out there instead of a few blackbirds, and sat down. A moment later she began to make water and sighed contentedly. Here was another thing about being old no one ever thought to tell you (or was it just that you never listened?)-you stopped knowing when you had to make water. Seemed like you lost all the feeling down there in your bladder, and if you weren't careful, first thing you knew you had to be changing your clothes. It wasn't like her to be dirty, and so she came out here to squat six or seven times a day, and at night she kept the chamberpot beside the bed. Molly's Jim told her once that she was like a dog that couldn't pass a fireplug without at least lifting one leg to salute it, and that had made her laugh until tears spouted from her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. Molly's Jim was an advertising executive in Chicago and getting along a right smart ... had been, anyway. She supposed he was gone with the rest of them. Molly too. Bless their hearts, they were with Jesus now.

The last year or so, Molly and Jim were about the only ones who came out to the place to see her anymore. The rest seemed to have forgot she was alive, but she could understand that. She had lived past her time. She was like a dinosaur which had no business still wearing its flesh over its bones, a thing whose proper place was in a museum (or a graveyard). She could understand them not wanting to come see her, her, but what she couldn't understand was why they didn't want to come back and see the but what she couldn't understand was why they didn't want to come back and see the land. land. There wasn't much left, no; just a matter of acres out of the original large freehold. It was still theirs, however; still There wasn't much left, no; just a matter of acres out of the original large freehold. It was still theirs, however; still their land. their land. But black folks didn't seem to care so much about land anymore. There were, in fact, those that actually seemed ashamed of it. They had gone off to make their way in the cities, and most of them, like Jim, came along real well ... but how it made her heart ache, to think of all those black folks with their faces set away from the land! But black folks didn't seem to care so much about land anymore. There were, in fact, those that actually seemed ashamed of it. They had gone off to make their way in the cities, and most of them, like Jim, came along real well ... but how it made her heart ache, to think of all those black folks with their faces set away from the land!

Molly and Jim had wanted to put in a flushing toilet for her the year before last, and had been hurt when she refused. She tried to explain so they could understand, but all Molly had been able to say, over and over again was, "Mother Abagail, you are a hundred and six years old. How do you think I feel, knowing you are going out there to squat down some days when it's only ten degrees above zero? Don't you know that the shock of the cold could do your heart in?"

"When the Lord wants me, the Lord will take me," Abagail said, and she was knitting, and so of course they thought that was what she was looking at and couldn't see the way they rolled their eyes at each other.

Some things you couldn't let go of. It seemed like that was another thing the young people didn't know. Now, back in '82, when she had turned a hundred, Cathy and David had offered her a TV set and she had taken them up on that one. The TV was a marvelous machine for passing the time when you were by your onesome. But when Christopher and Susy came and said they wanted to get her on the city water, she had turned them down just as she had turned down Molly and Jim on their kind offer of a flushing toilet. They had argued that her dug well was shallow, and it could go dry if there was another summer like 1988, when the drought came. It was true, but she just went on saying no. They thought she had flipped her wig, of course, that she was taking coat after coat of senility the way a floor takes varnish, but she herself believed her mind was pretty nigh as good as it had ever been.

She hoisted herself off the privy's seat, dusted lime down through the hole, and slowly let herself out into the sunlight again. She kept her privy sweet, but they were dank old places no matter how sweet they smelled.

It was as if the voice of God had been whispering in her ear when Chris and Susy offered to see that she was put on the city water ... the voice of God even way back when Molly and Jim wanted to get her that china throne with the flush-lever on the side. God did did speak to folks; hadn't He talked to Noah about the ark, telling him how many cubits long and how many deep and how many wide? Yes. And she believed He had spoken to her as well, not from a burning bush or out of a pillar of fire, but in a still, small voice that said: speak to folks; hadn't He talked to Noah about the ark, telling him how many cubits long and how many deep and how many wide? Yes. And she believed He had spoken to her as well, not from a burning bush or out of a pillar of fire, but in a still, small voice that said: Abby, you are going to need your hand-pump. You enjoy your lectricity all you want, Abby, but you keep those oil-lamps of yours full and keep the wicks trimmed. You keep the cold-pantry just the way your mother kept it before you. And mind you don't let any of the young folks talk you into anything you know to be against My will, Abby. They are your kin, but I am your Father. Abby, you are going to need your hand-pump. You enjoy your lectricity all you want, Abby, but you keep those oil-lamps of yours full and keep the wicks trimmed. You keep the cold-pantry just the way your mother kept it before you. And mind you don't let any of the young folks talk you into anything you know to be against My will, Abby. They are your kin, but I am your Father.

She paused in the middle of the yard, looking out at the sea of corn, broken only by the dirt road going north toward Duncan and Columbus. Three miles up from her house it went to tar. The corn was going to be fine this year, and it was such a shame that no one would be around to harvest it but the rooks. It was sad to think that the big red harvesting machines were going to stay in their barns this September, sad to think there would be no husking bees and barn dances. Sad to think that, for the first time in the last one hundred and eight years, she would not be here in Hemingford Home to see the time of the change as summer gave in to pagan, jocund autumn. She would love this summer all the more because it was to be her last-she felt that clearly. And she would not be laid to rest here but farther west, in a strange country. It was bitter.

She shuffled over to the tire swing and set it to moving. It was an old tractor tire that her brother Lucas had hung here in 1922. The rope had been changed many times between then and now, but never the tire. Now the canvas showed through in many places, and on the inside rim there was a deep depression where generations of young buttocks had set themselves down. Below the tire was a deep and dusty groove in the earth where the grass had long since given up trying to grow, and on the limb where the rope was tied, the bark had been rubbed away to show the branch's white bone. The rope creaked slowly and this time she spoke aloud.

"Please, my Lord, my Lord, not unless I have to, I'd have you take this cup from my lips if You can. I'm old and I'm scared and mostly I'd just like to lie right here on the home place. I'm ready to go right now if You want me. Thy will be done, my Lord, but Abb's one tired shufflin old black woman. Thy will be done."

No sound but the creak of the rope against the branch and the crows off in the corn. She put her old seamed forehead against the old seamed bark of the apple tree her father had planted so long ago and she wept bitterly.

That night she dreamed she was mounting the steps to the Grange Hall stage again, a young and pretty Abagail, three months quick with child, a dusky Ethiopian jewel in her white dress, holding her guitar by the neck, climbing, climbing into that stillness, her thoughts a millrace, yet holding above all to one thought: I am Abagail Freemantle Trotts, and I play well and I sing well. I do not know these things because anyone told me. I am Abagail Freemantle Trotts, and I play well and I sing well. I do not know these things because anyone told me.

In the dream she turned slowly, facing those white faces turned up to her like moons, faced the hall so richly alight with its lamps and the mellow glow thrown back from the darkened, slightly steamed windows and the red velvet swags with their gold ropes.

She held firmly to that one thought and began to play "Rock of Ages." She played and her voice came out, not nervous and restrained, but exactly as it had come out when she had been practicing, rich and mellow, like the yellow lamplight itself, and she thought: I am going to win them. With the help of God I am going to win them over. Oh my people, if you are thirsty, will I not bring water from the rock? I will win them over, and I will make David proud of me and Mamma and Daddy proud of me, I will make myself proud of myself, I will bring music from the air and water from the rock- I am going to win them. With the help of God I am going to win them over. Oh my people, if you are thirsty, will I not bring water from the rock? I will win them over, and I will make David proud of me and Mamma and Daddy proud of me, I will make myself proud of myself, I will bring music from the air and water from the rock- And that was when she saw him for the first time. He was standing far back in the corner, behind all the seats, his arms folded across his chest. He was wearing jeans and a denim jacket with buttons on the pockets. He was wearing dusty black boots with rundown heels, boots that looked as if they had walked many a dark and dusty mile. His forehead was white as gaslight, his cheeks red with jolly blood, his eyes blazing blue diamond chips, sparkling with infernal good cheer, as if the Imp of Satan had taken over the job of Kris Kringle. A hot and fleering grin had pulled his lips back from his teeth into something close to a snarl. The teeth were white and sharp and neat, like the teeth of a weasel.

He raised his hands out from his body. Both of them were curled into fists, as tight and hard as knots on an apple tree. His grin remained, jolly and utterly hideous. Drops of blood began to fall from his fists.

The words dried up in her mind. Her fingers forgot how to play; there was a final discordant jangle and then silence.

God! God! she cried, but God had turned His face away. she cried, but God had turned His face away.

Then Ben Conveigh was standing up, his face red and flaming, his small pig's eyes glittering. Nigger bitch! Nigger bitch! he shouted. he shouted. What's that nigger bitch doing up on our stage? No nigger bitch ever brought music from the air! No nigger bitch ever brought water from the rock! What's that nigger bitch doing up on our stage? No nigger bitch ever brought music from the air! No nigger bitch ever brought water from the rock!

Answering cries of savage agreement. People surging forward. She saw her husband stand up and attempt to mount the stage. A fist hit him in the mouth, bowling him over backward.

Get those dirty coons in the back of the hall! Bill Arnold hollered, and somebody pushed Rebecca Freemantle into the wall. Someone else- Chet Deacon, by the looks-wrapped one of the red velvet window curtains around Rebecca and then tied her in with one of the gold ropes. He was yelling: Bill Arnold hollered, and somebody pushed Rebecca Freemantle into the wall. Someone else- Chet Deacon, by the looks-wrapped one of the red velvet window curtains around Rebecca and then tied her in with one of the gold ropes. He was yelling: Looka here! Dressed coon! Dressed coon! Looka here! Dressed coon! Dressed coon!

Others rushed over to where Chet Deacon was, and they all began to punch and pummel the struggling woman under the velvet drape.

Mamma! Abby screamed. Abby screamed.

The guitar was plucked from her nerveless fingers and smashed to strips and strings on the edge of the stage.

She looked wildly for the dark man at the back of the hall, but his engine had been set in motion and was running sweet and hot; he had gone on to some other place.

Mamma! she screamed again, and then rough hands were hauling her from the stage, they were under her dress, pawing her, tweaking her, pinching her bottom. Her hand was pulled sharply by someone, yanking her arm in her socket. It was put against something hard and hot. she screamed again, and then rough hands were hauling her from the stage, they were under her dress, pawing her, tweaking her, pinching her bottom. Her hand was pulled sharply by someone, yanking her arm in her socket. It was put against something hard and hot.

Ben Conveigh's voice in her ear: How do you like MY rock of ages, you nigger slut? How do you like MY rock of ages, you nigger slut?

The room was whirling. She saw her father struggling to get at the limp form of her mother, and she saw a white hand holding a bottle come down on the back of a folding camp chair. There was a rattle and a smash, and then the jagged neck of the bottle, twinkling in the warm glow of all those lamps, was thrust into her father's face. She saw his staring, bulging eyes pop like grapes.

She screamed and the force of her cry seemed to break the room apart, to let in darkness, and she was Mother Abagail again, one hundred and eight years old, too old, my Lord, too old (but let Thy will be done), and she was walking in the corn, the mystic corn that was rooted shallow in the earth but wide, lost in the corn that was silver with moonglow and black with shadow; she could hear the summer nightwind rustling gently through it, she could smell its growing, wholly alive smell as she had smelled it all her long, long life (and she had thought many times that this was the plant closest to all life, the corn, and its smell was the smell of life itself, the start of life, oh she had married and buried three husbands, David Trotts, Henry Hardesty, and Nate Brooks, and she had had three men in bed, had welcomed them as a woman must welcome a man, by giving way before him, and there had always been the yearning pleasure, the thought Oh my God how I love to be sexy with my man and how I love him to be sexy with me when he gets me what he gets me what he shoots in me Oh my God how I love to be sexy with my man and how I love him to be sexy with me when he gets me what he gets me what he shoots in me and sometimes at the instant of her climax she would think of the corn, the bland corn with its roots planted not deep but wide, she would think of flesh and then the corn, when it was all over and her husband lay beside her the sex smell would be in the room, the smell of the spunk the man had shot into her, the smell of the juices she made to smooth his way, and it was a smell like husked corn, mild and sweet, a goodish smell). and sometimes at the instant of her climax she would think of the corn, the bland corn with its roots planted not deep but wide, she would think of flesh and then the corn, when it was all over and her husband lay beside her the sex smell would be in the room, the smell of the spunk the man had shot into her, the smell of the juices she made to smooth his way, and it was a smell like husked corn, mild and sweet, a goodish smell).

And yet she was afraid, ashamed of this very intimacy with soil and summer and growing things, because she was not alone. He He was here with her, two rows to the right or left, trailing just behind or ranging just ahead. The dark man was here, his dusty boots digging into the meat of the soil and throwing it away in clouts, grinning in the night like a stormlamp. was here with her, two rows to the right or left, trailing just behind or ranging just ahead. The dark man was here, his dusty boots digging into the meat of the soil and throwing it away in clouts, grinning in the night like a stormlamp.

Then he spoke, for the first time he spoke aloud, and she could see his moonshadow, tall and hunched and grotesque, falling into the row she was walking. His voice was like the night wind that begins to moan through the old and fleshless cornstalks in October, like the very rattling of those old white infertile cornstalks themselves as they seem to speak of their end. It was a soft voice. It was the voice of doom.

It said: I have your blood in my fists, old Mother. If you pray to God, pray He takes you before you ever hear my feet coming up your steps. It was not you who brought music from the air, not you who brought water from the rock, and your blood is in my fists.

Then she was awake, awake in the hour before dawn, and at first she thought she had peed the bed, but it was only a night sweat, heavy as May dew. Her thin body was shuddering helplessly, and every part of her ached for rest.

My Lord, my Lord, take this cup from my lips.

Her Lord did not answer. There was only the light knocking of the early morning wind at the windowpanes, which were loose and rattling and in need of fresh putty. At last she got up and poked up the fire in her old woodburning stove and put on the coffee.

She had a great deal to do in the next few days, because she was going to have company. Dreams or not, tired or not, she had never been one to slight company and she didn't intend to start now. But she would have to go very slowly or she would get forgetting things-she forgot a lot these days-and misplacing things until she ended up chasing her own tail.

The first thing was to get down to Addie Richardson's henhouse, and that was a goodish way, four or five miles. She found herself wondering if the Lord was going to send her an eagle to fly her those four miles, or send Elijah in his fiery chariot to give her a lift.

"Blasphemy," she told herself complacently. "The Lord provides strength, not taxicabs."

When her few dishes were washed, she put on her heavy shoes and took her cane. Even now she rarely used the cane, but today she would need it. Four miles going, four miles coming back. At sixteen she could have dashed one way and trotted the other, but sixteen was far behind her now.

She set off at eight o'clock in the morning, hoping to reach the Richardson farm by noon and sleep through the hottest part of the day. In the late afternoon she would kill her chickens and then come home in the gloaming. She wouldn't arrive until after dark, and that made her think of her dream of the night before, but that man was still far away. Her company was much closer.

She walked very slowly, even more slowly than she felt she had to, because even at eight-thirty the sun was fat and powerful. She didn't sweat much-there wasn't enough excess flesh on her bones to wring the sweat out of-but by the time she'd reached the Goodells' mailbox, she had to rest a bit. She sat in the shade of their pepper tree and ate a few fig bars. Not an eagle or a taxicab in sight, either. She cackled a little at that, got up, brushed the crumbs off her dress, and went on. Nope, no taxicabs. The Lord helped those that helped themselves. All the same, she could feel all of her joints tuning up; tonight there would be a concert.

She hunched more and more over her cane as she went, even though her wrists began to be a misery to her. Her brogans with the yellow rawhide lacings shuffled in the dust. The sun beat down on her, and as the time passed, her shadow got shorter and shorter. She saw more wild animals that morning than she had seen since the twenties: fox, coon, porcupine, fisher. Crows were everywhere, squalling and cawing and circling in the sky. If she had been around to hear Stu Redman and Glen Bateman discussing the capricious-it had seemed capricious to them, anyhow-way the superflu had taken some animals while leaving others alone, she would have laughed. It had taken the domestic animals and left the wild ones alone, it was as simple as that. A few species of domestics had been spared, but as a general rule, the plague had taken man and man's best friends. It had taken the dogs but left the wolves, because the wolves were wild and the dogs weren't.

A red-hot sparkplug of pain had settled deep into each of her hips, behind each knee, in her ankles, in the wrists she was using to support herself on the cane. She walked and she talked to her God, sometimes silently, sometimes aloud, unaware of any difference between the two. And she fell to thinking about her own past again. 1902 had been the best year, all right. After that it seemed that time sped up, the pages of some big fat calendar ruffling over and over, hardly ever pausing. A body's life went by so fast ... how was it a body could get so tired of living it?

She'd had five children by Davy Trotts; one of them, Maybelle, had choked to death on a piece of apple in the back yard of the Old Place. Abby had been hanging clothes and she had turned around to see the baby lying on her back, clawing at her throat and turning purple. She had gotten the chunk of apple out at last, but by then little Maybelle had been still and cold, the only girl she had ever borne and the only one of her many children to die an accidental death.

Now she sat in the shade of an elm just inside the Nauglers' fence, and two hundred yards up the road she could see where dirt gave way to tar-this was the place where Freemantle Road became Polk County Road. The heat of the day made a shimmer over the tar, and at the horizon was quicksilver, shining like water in a dream. On a hot day you always saw that quicksilver just at the end of where your eye could see, but you never quite caught up to it. Or at least she she never had. never had.

David had died in 1913, of an influenza not so very different from this one, which had wiped out so many. In 1916, when she had been thirty-four, she had married Henry Hardesty, a black farmer from Wheeler County up north. He had come to court her special. Henry was a widower with seven children, all but two of them grown up and gone away. He was seven years older than Abagail. He had given her two boys before his tractor turned turtle on him and killed him in the late summer of 1925.

A year after that she had married Nate Brooks, and people had talked -oh yes, people talk, how people do love to talk, sometimes it seemed that was all they had to do. Nate had been Henry Hardesty's hired man, and he had been a good husband to her. Not as sweet as David, perhaps, and surely not as tenacious as Henry, but a good man who had pretty much done as she had told him. When a woman began to get a trifle along in years, it was a comfort to know who had the upper hand.

Her six boys had produced a crop of thirty-two grandchildren for her. Her thirty-two grandchildren had produced ninety-one great-grandchildren that she knew of, and at the time of the superflu, she had had three great-great-grandchildren. Would have had more, if not for the pills the girls took these days to keep the babies away. It seemed like for them, being sexy was just another playground to be in. Abagail felt sorry for them in their modern ways, but she never spoke of it. It was up to God to judge whether or not they were sinning by taking those pills (and not to that baldheaded old fart in Rome-Mother Abagail had been a Methodist all her life, and she was damned proud of not having any truck with those mackerel-snapping Catholics), but Abagail knew what they were missing: the ecstasy which comes when you stand on the lip of the Valley of the Shadow, the ecstasy that comes when you gave yourself up to your man and your God, when you say thy will be done and Thy Thy will be done; the final ecstasy of sex in the sight of the Lord, when a man and a woman relive the old sin of Adam and Eve, only now washed and sanctified in the Blood of the Lamb. will be done; the final ecstasy of sex in the sight of the Lord, when a man and a woman relive the old sin of Adam and Eve, only now washed and sanctified in the Blood of the Lamb.

Ah, welladay ...

She wanted a drink of water, she wanted to be home in her rocker, she wanted to be left alone. Now she could see the sun glinting off the henhouse roof ahead to her left. A mile, no more. It was quarter past ten, and she wasn't doing too badly for an old gal. She would let herself in and sleep until the cool of the evening. No sin in that. Not at her age. She shuffled along the shoulder, her heavy shoes now coated with road-dust.

Well, she had had a lot of kin to bless her in her old age, and that was something. There were some, like Linda and that no-account salesman she had married, who didn't care to come calling, but there were the good ones like Molly and Jim and David and Cathy, enough to make up for a thousand Lindas and no-account salesmen who went door to door selling waterless cookware. The last of her brothers, Luke, had died in 1949, at the age of eightysomething, and the last of her children, Samuel, in 1974, at the age of fifty-four. She had outlived all of her children, and that was not the way it was supposed to be, but it seemed like the Lord had special plans for her.

In 1982, when she had turned one hundred, her picture had been in the Omaha paper and they had sent out a TV reporter to do a story on her. "To what do you attribute your great age?" the young man had asked her, and he had looked disappointed at her brief, almost curt answer: "To God." They wanted to hear about how she ate beeswax, or stayed away from fried pork, or how she kept her legs up when she slept. But she did none of those things, and was she to lie? God gives life and He takes it away when He wants.

Cathy and David had given her her TV so she could watch herself on the news, and she got a letter from President Reagan (no spring chicken himself) congratulating her on her "advanced age" and the fact that she had voted Republican for as long as she'd had a vote to cast. Well, who else would she vote for? Roosevelt and his crowd had all been Communists. And when she turned the century, the town of Hemingford Home had repealed her taxes "in perpetuity" because of that same advanced age Ronald Reagan had congratulated her for. She got a paper certifying her as the oldest living person in Nebraska, as if that was something little children grew up hoping to be. It was a good thing about the taxes, though, even if the rest of it had been purest foolishness-if they hadn't done that, she would have lost what little land she still had. Most of it had been long gone anyway; the Freemantle holdings and the power of the Grange had both reached high water in that magic year of 1902 and had been declining ever since. Four acres was all that was left. The rest had either been taken for taxes or sold off for cash over the years ... and most of the selling had been done by her own sons, she was ashamed to say.

Last year she had been sent a paper by some New York combination that called itself the American Geriatrics Society. The paper said she was the sixth-oldest human being in the United States, and the third-oldest woman. The oldest of them all was a fellow in Santa Rosa, California. The fellow in Santa Rosa was a hundred and twenty-two. She had gotten Jim to put that letter in a frame for her and hang it beside the letter from the President. Jim hadn't got around to doing that until this February. Now that she thought about it, that had been the last time she saw Molly and Jim.

She had reached the Richardson farm. Almost completely exhausted, she leaned for a moment against the fencepost closest to the barn and looked longingly at the house. It would be cool inside there, cool and nice. She felt she could sleep an age. Yet before she could do that, there was one more thing she had to do. A lot of animals had died with this disease-horses, dogs, and rats-and she had to know if chickens were among them. It would be a bitter laugh on her to discover she had come all this way to find only dead chickens.

She shuffled toward the henhouse, which was attached to the barn, and stopped when she could hear them cackling inside. A moment later a cock crowed irritably.

"All right," she muttered. "That's good, then."

She was turning around when she saw the body sprawled by the woodpile, one hand thrown over his face. It was Bill Richardson, Addie's brother-in-law. He had been well picked over by foraging animals.

"Poor man," Abagail said. "Poor, poor man. Flights of angels sing you to y'rest, Billy Richardson."

She turned back to the cool, inviting house. It seemed miles away, although in reality it was only across the dooryard. She wasn't sure she could make it that far; she was utterly exhausted.

"Lord's will be done," she said, and began to walk.

The sun was shining in the window of the guest bedroom, where she had lain down and fallen asleep as soon as her brogans were off. For a long time she couldn't understand why the light was so bright; it was much the feeling Larry Underwood had had upon awakening beside the rock wall in New Hampshire.