I nodded my head again, and let it go at that.
“Is he in there now?” she wants to know.
I nodded again. I hadn't meant to give out any untrue stories. But a kid will always lie, not meaning particular to lie, if you sort of invite him with questions like that, and get him scared by the way you're acting. Besides, I says to myself, so long as Hank has turned into a corpse, and being a corpse makes him dead, what's the difference whether he's in the blacksmith shop or in the cistern? I hadn't had any plain idea before that being a corpse meant the same thing as being dead. And I wasn't any too sure what being dead was like, either. Except I knew they had funerals over you then. I knew being a corpse must be a disadvantage from the way that Elmira has always said to keep away from that cistern, or I'd be one. And I began to see the whole thing was more important even than I had figured it was at first. I wondered if there'd be a funeral at our house. If there was one, that would be fine. They didn't have them every day in our town, and we hadn't ever had one of our own.
Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house, both a-crying, and Mis' Alexander trying to comfort her, and me a-tagging along behind holding on to Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a few minutes all those women that Mis' Rogers had told came filing into the house, one at a time, looking sad and mournful. Only old Mis' Primrose, she was a little late getting there, because she stopped to put on the dress she always wore to funerals, with the black Paris lace on to it that her cousin Arminty White had sent her from Chicago.
When they found out that Hank had come home with liquor in him and done it himself they were all excited and they all crowded around and asked me questions, except two that were holding Elmira's hands where she sat moaning in a chair. And those questions scared me and egged me on to lies I hadn't had any idea of telling.
Says one woman: “Danny, you saw him do it in the blacksmith shop?”
I nodded.
“But how did he get in?” says another one. “The door was locked on the outside with a padlock just now when I came by. He couldn't have killed himself in there and then locked the door on the outside.”
I didn't see how he could have done that myself, so I began to bawl again and said nothing at all.
“He must have crawled into the shop through that little side window,” says Mis' Primrose. “That window was open when I came by, even if the door was locked. Did you see him crawl through the little side window, Danny?”