"That's the truth! Jodie, I don't know how you look at it, but as I see it, it's best now to let Ward's folks bury him and not stir up a ruckus over the technicalities of just how he died. Far as I'm concerned, it don't make a continental how the gun went off. It's not the how of death that's of any consequence. It's death. If there was ever anything any 'count in Ward Lawson—and there must've been at some time; nobody's worthless all their livelong life—it died a good while back. When, I don't know. But it wasn't Sunday at sundown when that lead ripped through his jugular vein!"
Papa and the doctor walked on through the gate into the grove of trees in front of Miss Ophelia's house, where the dozen or more buggies and wagons and saddle horses were waiting. But Doctor Elton wasn't bobbing and bouncing along the way he usually walked. He was dragging his feet, and when he got to the side of his big black buggy, he had to catch one hand on the dashboard and the other on the armrest so he could pull himself up to the seat.
Papa tugged at the bridle bit of one mare just enough to make her start backing the buggy a few feet. The doctor gave both mares a light touch with the whip, and they struck up a smooth trot. Turning halfway round, Doctor Elton lifted his hand to Papa.
When I saw Papa was going toward the barn instead of coming back to the porch, I scooted down the bare, windy hall to the kitchen.
More and more folks, most of them strangers, kept coming to the Lawson house. And it seemed that everything was going wrong and nobody knew what to do. I didn't know what to do either. Mama said for me just to be sweet and stay out of the way.
Uncle Dan brought Miss Ophelia's children home. But the girls didn't want to play with me. They just stood around, looking at the houseful of people. The middle girl, Sissie, never would take her thumb out of her mouth—not even long enough to tell me her real name. Eftie, the biggest one, couldn't play because she had to tend to her baby sister.
The boy named Philip wouldn't play with me either. He had a bad earache. He had been crying with it when they all came home from the schoolhouse, and he kept on crying, even after Mama heated up a skillet of salt and fixed a poultice sack for him to hold against his ear. Finally, when Aunt Vic warmed some milk for him to drink, he began to feel better.
While Aunt Vic was making biscuits, Mama and Miss Lida Belle were trying to decide what would be the best thing to do for Miss Dink.
"It's dreadful cold in that far side room," Miss Lida Belle told Mama. "Let's move her 'cross the hall to the fireplace room."
Mama sent me out to the woodpile to get Papa. He came, and together they rolled Miss Dink up in a blanket, and Papa toted her across the hall. When Papa laid Miss Dink on the freshly made bed, she sank down into the feather mattress so far I could hardly see her wrinkled face. Something had made her cheeks turn a strange yellowish color. And she wasn't laughing like she had been that day she told me and Mama how a long time ago she smeared hog lard on Miss Ophelia's seven-year itch.