“Nary soul to keep watch with the dead,” Phronie complained under her breath. “It’s dark in yonder. Dark and still as the grave. A body’s got to have light. How else can they see to make it to the other world?” She paused to sharpen her knife on the edge of the crock, glancing cautiously now and then toward the door of the narrow hallway that led to the room where the dead men lay.
The plaintive call of a whippoorwill far off beyond Triplett Creek, where one of the men had been killed that day, drifted into the quiet house.
“It’s a sorry song for sorry times,” murmured old Phronie, “and it ought to tender the heart of them that’s mixed up in these troubles. No how, whosoever’s to blame, the dead ort not to be forsaken.”
There was a sound behind her. Phronie turned to see the hall door opening slowly. “Who’s there?” she called. But no one answered. The door opened wider. But no one entered.
“It’s a sign,” the old woman whispered. “Well, no one can ever say Phronie forsaken the dead.” It was as though the old crone answered an unspoken command. She put down the crock of potatoes and the paring knife. Wiping her hands on her apron, Phronie took the oil lamp, with its battered tin reflector, from the wall. “Can’t no one ever say I forsaken the dead,” she repeated, “nor shunned a sign or token. The dead’s got to have light same as the living.”
Holding the lamp before her, she passed slowly along the narrow hall on to the room where the dead men lay wrapped in their sheets. She drew a chair from a corner and climbed upon it and hung the lamp above the mantel. It was the chair on which Craig Tolliver, alive and boastful and fearless, had sat that morning when she had brought him hot coffee and cornbread while he kept an eye out for the posse, the self-appointed citizens who later killed the Tolliver leader and his three companions.
The flickering light of the oil lamp fell upon the ghastly faces of the dead men.
For a moment the old woman gazed at the still forms. Then suddenly her glance fixed itself upon the face of Craig Tolliver.
Slowly the lashes of Craig’s right eye moved ever so slightly.
Phronie was sure of it. She gripped the back of the chair on which she stood to steady herself, for now the lid of the dead man’s eye twitched convulsively. As the trembling old woman gaped, the eye of the slain feudist opened and shut. Not once, but three times, quick as a wink.