"Listen to that little bird," Elsie tells her postman, Waymon. "Something in that tree's bothering him. Wonder what it is?"

Waymon sits on the porch swing and answers, "Winter coming? Maybe a squirrel?"

"I bet it is. An ornery old squirrel messing with her nest."

Waymon has been her postman for fifteen years. Often he stops by to rest and talk and he offers to help Elsie out any way he can. Her oldest son has told Elsie, "Don't let him in the house. No telling what he's really after." Elsie lives alone. She is seventy nine years old. A tiny, but strong woman. Alone last year she hoed her entire garden, a garden large enough to fill her freezer and give bounty to friends. But her son gets angry now when he sees her in the yard any time. He says, "You could fall down hanging out the laundry and break your hip. You might lay there all day long before I got off work and found you."

So she stays inside or sits on this porch.

Waymon has brought a phone number that Elsie's son said would be impossible to get. It is the phone number for the daughter of Elsie's sister Maydie Lee. Maydie Lee has been institutionalized in the state hospital for forty years but now it’s her body that’s going. Elsie’s the only relative doctors have been able to reach.

Elsie folds the piece of paper in her lap.

She tells Waymon, "I heard something slapping on the porch last night. Like this." She slaps the wall behind her, pauses and slaps once more.

"Could have been the wind," Waymon says. "Or a ghost."

"Wasn't no ghost. Somebody was out here messing around."

"You never know." Waymon rises and heads for the steps. In the yard he waves, saying, "Let me know what I can do for your sister. I'll help any way I can. You need a pallbearer, anything. I'll be there."

Elsie has dreaded calling Maydie Lee's children. Trying to recall faces she says the boys' names outloud, "Virgil. Jasper." She has to read the name on the scrap of paper again. The daughter's name won't stay clear in her mind. Last week when the doctors asked her to help locate Maydie Lee's kids, Elsie had to have Waymon ask the postman from Bogue Chitto for a list of potential relatives.

Inside the kitchen she stares at the name and number on the piece of paper by the phone. With one hand she picks up the number, in the other she cradles the receiver. Paper in hand, she dials.

The phone rings five times. On the fifth ring a woman answers. The background is cluttered with the noises of children, a baby wailing, boys whooping. Elsie says, "Is this Leila?"

"It is." Though the voice is unfamiliar, there is a soft, timid quality to it that Elsie decides reminds her of Maydie Lee, and saying the name brings back a child's wide eyes, eyes that seem as blue in memory as the blue of a peacock feather.

"This is your Aunt Elsie. Remember me?"

Leila hollers away from the phone, "Jeremy settle down. I'm talking," and then, "I sure do."

It takes a moment before Elsie speaks, because she's uncertain if the response was meant harshly or not. She says, "I'm afraid I've got bad news."

"Oh?" says Leila. She must have picked up the baby because its cries are louder, as is Leila's voice.

"Sounds like you got your hands full," says Elsie.

A spray of rain comes through the screen and hits Elsie's knee. She says, "They've brought your mama into town. She’s in the old folk's home. They don't think she has long to live."

Leila doesn't say anything.

"Thought you might want to go up and see her."

"How long does she have?" Leila asks.

"Doctors expect her to go any time."

"She's on up in years."

It takes a moment before Elsie says, "Yes, the good Lord gave her that."

Silence stretches between them. Elsie hears a cat meowing beneath the house, wind scattering leaves. Finally, Leila says, "I don't know what to say. She may be my mama, but I don't really know her."

Elsie crumples and then smoothes the piece of paper. She runs a finger over the letters of the name, the numbers. She says, "There were circumstances."

"I know there was." Something crashes. A child cries. "Thanks for calling," says Leila. "I got to go."

"All right," says Elsie. She keeps the phone to her ear, listens to the click and the dial tone. Questions she did not ask crowd her thoughts, how many children do you have? Who did you marry? What happened to you all those years you were growing up without your mama?

I was there when you were born, she thinks. She closes her eyes. Maydie Lee's babies were born one every nine months after the other, difficult births in a back bedroom. Maydie Lee had fallen asleep after Leila was born. Elsie was there. When her sister awoke, Elsie asked her how she felt and Maydie Lee had said, "Like my heart's going to bust right out of me."

Elsie had washed the children and straightened the house. She can hardly recall any thing about the house now but its filth and how she couldn't stand to be there.

Elsie is watching the news when her son's headlights roll across the wall and glare full into the living room before going out.

She greets him at the door as she does each evening.

She can see something's wrong because Laris will not meet her eyes with his own. She follows him through the hall. Each step they take toward the kitchen, the linoleum sticks and makes a ripping sound as it unlooses behind them. Laris has groceries for her. He puts candy bars, cokes and eggs inside the refrigerator.

He says, "Sit down, Mama."

She does and he sits across from her. In the hallway behind him more linoleum crackles as it comes unstuck. The refrigerator kicks back on.

He says, "They called me at work. Didn't want you to find out from a stranger on the telephone. Maydie Lee passed away this afternoon.

Elsie looks at the rise and weave of blue veins in her hands. Everything blurs. "I hoped I might be with her, be able talk to her as she went on," she says. "Was she alone?"

"There were nurses there. Is there ever a right way, Mama? We can't plan it out."

"She had a hard, hard, old life."

"Her soul can rest now, Mama."

Elsie covers her face with her hands as if she will cry into them, but her eyes remain dry.

Laris says, "I know. I know. It ain't ever easy. She was your sister."

He touches her fingers, says, "Mama? They need to get a hold of her kids."

"I tried her daughter. She didn't give a rip."

"Lord," he says, shaking his head in disgust. "Probably afraid they gonna have to pay for something."

Elsie’s heart flutters and her lungs seem to tighten with a raw ache. She says, "You know you don't ever have to worry about that. I've left you with everything I own, all the land, the house, everything. I have enough savings to cover my funeral."

"Shoot, Mama, you'll probably outlive me."

"You break your back helping me take care of the place. It's all yours. Nobody else’s. Not your brother’s or your sister’s."

"I sure do break my back, Mama, but I don't mind. It's a big, old yard to rake and mow. I wouldn't say I'm not the one who deserves it all, but you know I don't care about that."

"Maydie Lee's husband and children didn't give a rip what happened to her."

Laris moves. She looks at him, follows his gaze to the clock. It's already 7:25. It is his habit to be home no later than 7:30. He asks, "You gonna be all right?"

"Yes," she says.

"We'll take care of things tomorrow after work. I brought you a plate of food to heat up. Make sure you eat, you hear? You gonna get sick you don't eat."

"I’ll eat."

"Call if you need me. I'm a shout away."

"I will."

After he leaves she goes to bed. Tires swish over the wet highway just beyond her yard. Tears come, only a few of the many that have waited for years.

The next drizzly morning a mortician from the home calls. After giving his condolences he says, "I thought you might help me with the children. I talked to the daughter, but she didn't seem to understand. We just need her to sign release paperwork."

"Might as well give that up," says Elsie.

"We'd appreciate any help," says the man. "One of the children has to sign the paper's to release her body for burial. It's the law."

Elsie is stunned. A moment passes before she says, "I'll see what I can do."

The line fills with static as the man explains the importance of a signature.

As soon as Elsie hangs up, she begins dialing the A&P where Laris works as a butcher. Half way through she forgets the next number though it's a number she dials often. Cloth flutters above her head. Above the desk where she sits hang homemade sunbonnets.

She takes a pen from a mason jar and to calm herself, she writes Laris's work number on a notepad. This time she dials slowly. Between rings she hears voices fading in and out on the party line. A familiar voice cuts in.

"Laris," is all she says.

"Mama, what is it?"

She cannot keep track of how her words are coming out. The first thing she says is, "Maydie Lee can't be buried."

"Of course she can."

She blurts a jumble about the children, about Maydie Lee's husband being conveniently dead. She tells Laris he must hurry home and drive her to Bogue Chitto. It's only a couple of miles away. They can get there before dark. She knows the place where Maydie Lee lived with her husband and children. Okay, okay, he says, he'll be home as soon as he can. Yes, he'll take her to Bogue Chitto if that's necessary.

He comes to her house at his regular time, almost six. By then Elsie is seething. He could have made it earlier on a day such as this. She meets him in the driveway with her purse in hand. She walks past him and gets inside the truck.

Laris comes to the window and she locks her door. He asks, "Mama, what are you doing?"

She rolls the window down a crack and says, "Let's go."

He raps on the glass and his baffled face is only an inch or so away from hers when he asks, "Mama, shouldn't you eat first?"

She knows how tired he is after a day's work, but she persists. "No one ever cared about Maydie Lee. Waiting that's all we ever done. Every brother and sister. My own mama and daddy. She's a grown woman, we'd say. I won't do it now. You drive me or I'll walk."

He leaves the window, steps around the truck and gets in. "Lord, Mama! Settle down. You're going to make yourself sick."

She says, "This one thing is all I ask before I'm dead and buried. If I could drive, I would, but you know I cain't."

"Good God!" he says, cranking and gunning the engine. "Knowing you, you'll kill yourself walking to Bogue Chitto just to spite me."

"Laris Bristow!" she says.

"I'm sorry," he says. "But you're the one that's laying on the guilt. I don't know what to make of this. You're in a whirlwind."

He puts the truck in reverse and backs into the highway. As they move forward, he flings his arms up and his fingers bump the ceiling. He says, "This is crazy. It's late for you." He grasps the wheel and shakes his head. "Nothing can be done with you when you got your mind set."

"She don't have nobody to take care of things but me. I'm gonna do it."

Laris sighs heavily. "I'm driving," he says.

Evening sun rolls across the windshield. The rain has stopped but the tires splash through puddle after puddle. When they are far enough away from her home that Elsie feels content Laris won't turn back, she says, "That husband of Maydie Lee's, he let them children run loose like dogs. Dead and buried, he is. His day of reckoning has come and gone. They want me to find those children. It ain't been my responsibility to…" She looks out the window. "Evil little piss ants," she hisses.

She has been speaking very loudly and Laris turns to her and slowly and evenly he says, "Mama, I'm not arguing with you."

Now that the sky is only faintly lighted, the trees on each side of the road have turned to a thick dark wall that spills past and stretches endlessly forward. The movement eases her. Her heart has been racing and it begins to slow. She is doing something now. She rests her head against the seat. Laris turns on the radio, keeps it down low. The ugly twang of voices and instruments slices into her as they turn onto a side street and ride deeper into woods.

Elsie asks Laris to turn the volume down. He turns the music off. The sky is nearly black. Laris is right. It's late. A funeral procession rode past her house yesterday and she remembers the length of cars now. She says, "Quit a crowd turned out for the Doser boy."

"I figured it would."

"It's the way it happened," Elsie says. "Sudden and unexpected."

"Mama?" says Laris. "Have you considered where we're going once we get into Bogue Chitto?"

"I got names," Elsie says. "In my purse. You remember the road your daddy used to take out to Maydie Lee's house?"

"Mama, I was a kid. You wouldn't even let me get out of the truck. You said they was filthy people."

"We'll drive down the street. Go up to Foster's cattle farm and ask old man Foster how to get to their house. I got their names."

"Mama, we can't just drive up and ask at this time of night."

"Well, we can too. I'll get out and ask myself."

Laris sighs heavily. He looks at the road. The truck bumps over an old bridge. Elsie fears the pavement will cave in she hears so much creaking, but they make it and the road swims and swims beneath the truck. Bugs circle in the headlights and smash against the windshield.

Car lights flicker by and force themselves into Elsie's half-opened eyes. The truck hums and lulls her nearly to sleep and she dreams pictures from the past. She stands in the doorway of a narrow house. Maydie Lee is lying on a couch, her raven hair a mess about her face. There are bruises on her arms. From an open window above Maydie Lee's head, the scent of roses drifts in with grayish evening light. Two children stand near Maydie Lee, a boy and a girl. Elsie does not breathe, watching them. Their clothes are dirty and ill fitting. Between his thumb and fingers the boy squeezes his mother's face and shakes her head roughly. "Get up," he says.

The little girl twists her mother's hair in her fingers. She says, "Stop acting like you can't hear us." She jerks the hair and Maydie Lee let out a hellish scream.

Elsie had not known how to stop that screaming. Elsie's husband had been there. He'd helped get Maydie Lee into their car and they'd driven her back to the hospital.

But now the man beside Elsie is her son, not husband, though he has the same wet sand hair, and he is saying, "Mama, don't go to sleep. We're in town. What now?"

She runs fingers over goose bumps on her arms. She says, "Let me think." She asks Laris if he remembers the old wives tale about the dying, how they might hug you and breathe your life away, leave you to die, while they lived on? He says, yes, he remembers something like that. She says that well, the people at the state hospital reminded her of that in a different way. The way some gawked and tried to touch you as you passed made you feel as though they wanted to trade their demons for your peace of mind.

"But Maydie Lee wasn't crazy," she adds. "She just found herself a better place to be."

Laris stops at a phone booth to look and see if the names she's written down are listed. He gets out and walks to the booth, looks inside, turns back and calls to her that there's no book. He stands in front of the truck, fumbles in his pockets, takes out change, steps inside and shuts the booth door. A sign's reflection flashes on and off against the glass surrounding him. Nothing is so hard as sitting in the truck and not moving. The red light blinking against the glass seems to flutter across her eyelids. It washes over her face, again and again, like a soft hand. Then those hellish screams once more and Maydie Lee is beside her. It's Elsie's hand that's soft, moving the hair back from Maydie Lee's face. She manages to get her arms around her and rocks until Maydie Lee calms. "What? What?" she asks because Maydie Lee is mumbling. She speaks clearer. I'm never coming back. And Elsie can't understand, after the way those children treated her, after the way she'd treated them, but Madie Lee is begging her to make sure they are always all right. Elsie is stinging with the memory of her promise as Laris opens the truck door and gets inside. "I will."

"Can't find any of them listed."

She says, "Just drive."

"Mama, it's dark. It's not safe driving around like this. We’ll get ourselves shot."

She looks out the window. It's so dark she can hardly see. But she says, "Didn't we pass a bridge? See if they's a turnoff by the bridge."

He does. In a small clearing at the end of the drive is not a house as she expected, but a trailer. "I think this is the place," Elsie says. "Why don't you wait here while I check.

Standing outside she thinks, Here. Was it here that I stood years ago and saw Richard Rutland for the last time? He called Elsie to his home. He had met her outside. He had said he couldn't do anything with Maydie Lee. When he had taken Elsie to the room where Maydie Lee was, they had to use scissors to cut their way inside. She had tied the door and windows shut with yarn.

The trailer door opens and the sight takes Elsie's breath away. Richard's silhouette. So tall he has to duck before he can step out. She walks toward the man. Hears the truck door creaking open behind her.

He is a dark form standing beyond her in the junk cluttered yard.

"I was going to ask if you was a Rutland," she says. "But I can see you are."

He doesn't move. As she steps nearer, she sees Richard's hawklike nose.

"It's Elsie," she says. "Elsie Bristow. You know me."

He steps from the trailer. The light behind him from the open doorway blinds Elsie. He says, "What d'you want?"

She says, "I got news. News you don't want to hear on the phone."

As she speaks she steps nearer. She makes out his large eyes, the clearly defined lips. She says, "You're your mama's son."

She feels Laris beside her. "Me and your cousin here, maybe we can come inside with you."

He doesn't move.

Elsie says, "Which one might you be? Virgil? Jasper?"

"Virgil." He pats his chest, fumbles in his pocket and pulls out cigarettes and a lighter.

"You got something to tell me?"

"Well, if you won't invite us in, all I know to do is say it. Your mama has died."

As he lights his cigarette, he says, "You told me. Now you can go."

She feels that raw ache inside her opening up and turning hollow. She goes on. "Gonna bury her up in East Haven. They got papers down at the funeral home you need to sign."

"Papers?" He laughs. "I ain't signing any papers."

The ache grows. She feels as if she might float away in it. She says, "They need to bury her."

"You said what you wanted. Now you can leave." He turns his back to her, preparing to walk inside.

She touches her belly. The hollowness turns icy. She hisses, "What? You afraid they might want money?"

As Laris takes her arm, Virgil turns enough she can see the side of his face. Something glistens at the bridge of his nose. Tears? She will never know. "Come on, Mama," Laris says. "This isn't worth your time."

Inside the truck, as they are driving away, Elsie says, "People come around at times like these. Find forgiveness."

He says, "I don't claim to understand this. To turn your back on your own dead mama…" He shakes his head and adds, "But look how they grew up. Their mama in a mental hospital. A drunk for a daddy. They ignorant people Mama. No more brains than wild animals."

The clouds. The trees. She cannot see anything in the thick night to tell her which way to go. Tiredness floods her. She looks out the window. She says, "What do they think their mama done?"

"Who can figure out them kind of people?"

They look at each other. There is something insincere about the kindness in Laris’s gaze. She feels that hollow stab. She says, "Why, they don't want to remember what happened to her. They feel like she just up and left them."

Laris says, "It's just human nature. You get to be a burden and people don't want that."

"Maydie Lee wasn't no burden," Elsie says. "She found her a better place to be."

They drive on in silence. Laris gets Elsie home by 7:45. He goes inside with her and checks throughout the house. No one in any room. All the doors and windows locked. Elsie calls to him as he is leaving. "Tomorrow, you can take me to see my sister."

"I can do that," he says.

She locks the door behind him.

In morning a thick fog covers the woods surrounding Elsie's farm. Laris picks Elsie up and drives her to the old folks' home where Maydie Lee's body waits to be released for burial.

The air feels as if it's made of thick liquid. Elsie walks toward the bed. And there she is. Maydie Lee? Uncertainty twists inside Elsie. She does not want to look. She goes back years when she walks into a hospital room and sees a woman with a face beaten and swollen so with blood that it does not appear made of flesh. Her lips were crooked and busted. Maydie Lee stared toward - the wall? The window? Nothing. Elsie said, "Maydie Lee? Is that you? Can you hear me?"

Laris is holding Elsie's hand. He asks, Mama, are you all right?"

"Yes," she says and she looks at the body on the bed. Maydie Lee's eyes are closed, her hands folded across her chest. Long white hair shines, flows all the way to her waist. Elsie gathers strands and runs her fingers through. She says, "Still pretty and full as a child's." Maydie Lee's hair is soft and fine as a baby's, her nails so long they curve downward. Elsie doesn't touch the knotted fingers. She knows the coldness of death. There are no bruises, no black eyes, no busted lips. For years, Maydie Lee has been safe from a world she did not know how to live in. Tears fill Elsie's eyes, not enough to fall, but they blur her vision like dusky light that softens the wrinkles on Maydie Lee's face. Elsie turns away and Laris takes her by the arm. She says, "That's not her, is it? That's her body they'll be putting in the ground, but Maydie Lee's gone to a more beautiful place."

"If that's what the Good Lord wants."

The walls, the frosted windows, everything in the small room is close. Elsie pulls her elbow free from Laris and waves toward the door. She can hardly breathe, much less speak. But Laris understands. He takes her elbow again and leads her from the room.

Outside, once more in the foggy, chilly air, Laris says, "I know. I know. She was your sister, Mama."

She sits on some steps to regain herself. She fumbles in her purse and takes out a checkbook which she hands to Laris. "Go in there. Give them money. Tell them I'll sign anything, if they'll just get her taken care of."

Laris says, "That ain't it, Mama."

Still she insists and he goes back inside, comes out and tells her nothing can be done without a proper signature.

It takes three days and a sheriff delivering a court order to Maydie Lee's daughter but they get that signature.

Elsie has been ill and restless, rarely out of bed. On the day of the funeral she feels better. When her sister is buried she can rest. Elsie hasn't driven a day of her life, but she could tell Laris every path made in the woods to get to Mallalieu Methodist Church. She has not attended that church since she was eighteen years old. Her husband was Pentecostal. But it is the church she and all her brothers and sisters attended throughout childhood. The weather report said it was the coldest winter recorded in one hundred years in Mississippi. On the steps Elsie imagines the faces of children when she herself was young, standing right where she stands now. For a moment she is excited to be here. The trees have grown so tall.

Laris's hand is at the small of her back and he presses so she will walk inside. The church has not yet heated. Breath comes out in thick white clouds. The painted windows are the same as Elsie remembered, swooping colors, angels, Mary and Jesus. The ceiling above the pulpit arcs higher. Crosses are everywhere. Elsie and Laris sit in the front row.

Years ago when Elsie was eleven? Twelve? She'd made sure her younger brothers and sisters were quiet. She would hold Maydie Lee in her arms. She would straighten her clothes. Yet no one but Elsie comes in who can recall Maydie Lee as she once was in the pew beside her, singing in a lovely, soft voice, holding her hand over her lips and laughing silently in that shy habit of hers, her dark eyes lit up and happy. The casket is closed. The preacher enters from a door behind the pulpit.

Elsie keeps turning back to look at the closed church doors. Maybe one of Maydie Lee's children will show up. One of them will feel remorse. But no one does.

The preacher begins speaking and Elsie has trouble catching his words, her ears ring so from the cold. She catches bits and pieces. Maydie Lee Rutland. Restlessness. Those not here today. At peace. Light. Gates of heaven. Forgiveness. She hears that word and it rings the loudest. Elsie can't even pray to make herself feel that word. The ringing continues with every step Elsie takes out of the church, in the mingling of breath outside, in everything she touches, through Laris's asking. "Mama, you all right?"

"Yes." The preacher takes Elsie's hands, speaks words of comfort she doesn't want. Every touch, every word spoken cuts into her with its reminder that the only people here, are here for her, not Maydie Lee.

They drive to East Haven Cemetery. Elsie's fingers on the dash sting from the cold. Laris has hired strangers to help carry the casket. Elsie follows Laris and the rest of the pallbearers. She is freezing. She should have worn pants, not a dress and hose. The ringing aches, sounds like an endless chime of crystal. She feels as if her ears and face have turned to thin glass that might shatter.

Only when the casket disappears into the ground does the ringing quiet. Laris offers money to the strangers. They shake their heads. No, they won't take it.

In the truck, she says, "They good colored boys."

"Yes, Mama, they are."

At home, Laris lights wood in the fireplace, turns on the heater in the bathroom. He says, "Mama?" Elsie has always though her children said Mama like a question. "Why don't you come to my house and keep warm?"

She refuses. From her bed she watches the fire, its warmth yet to reach her. Laris pulls a blanket to her chin. She feels his cool fingertips brush the hair back from her face. His voice is a low murmur in the flames. She sleeps and awakens. At some time she heard Laris say goodbye.

She sleeps again and she is everywhere, watching. Her young husband sits at the end of the bed. Then she sees him outside. Her granddaughter follows him to the orchard. He knocks pecans off the tree with his cane. The little girl holds the hem of her dress to make a sack for the pecans. Elsie hears her son shouting profanities. She runs behind the house with a switch. He holds up his hands. In one is an axe, from the other his little finger dangles. The sight of blood causes her to faint, and she falls awake from dreams. The thunder roars and lightning cracks like the sound of a million cannons. Elsie knows lightning has struck the house. She remembers her daughter alone in the bathtub with eleven dozen bobbie pins in her hair and runs to her. Her daughter is in the water. All the pins have shot out and her hair looks like balls of plucked cotton. Color has drained from her face. Holding her daughter, Elsie rocks in front of the fireplace, runs her fingers through the frazzles of hair. Finally the dazed little girl falls into sleep and Elsie rises to take her to bed. She kisses the child's face and it becomes Maydie Lee's, the white blond hair turns black as the sky outside. She awakens. Her arms are empty. Her house was struck by lightning, everything she dreamed happened years ago.

She hears the slapping sound on the porch and walks through the hallway. She tugs hard to open the screen because it has frozen to the frame. The powdery air wets her lashes. Everything is ice. Icicles hang from the porch, from the trees. The light behind Elsie hums, creates her shadow on the ground beyond the porch. She longs to go to her shadow, to lie down in it, but the chill is too much. She walks back into the light of the house. It is cold inside too but she doesn't want to check the heat in the bathroom. The light in there blares so horribly bright.

In bed again, she falls in and out of sleep, in and out of dreams where children's eyes glitter peacock blue until the light in them deadens into dull stones. Each time she awakens to the fire beside her, the eyes hollow out and disappear behind the blaze. Little girls call to her. Their names stick in her throat unformed, push against her lips and seal them. She knows she is dreaming, but waking is only a place in between. Each time she opens her eyes she sees the huddled forms against the walls. Once Elsie awakens and asks a shadow, "What do you want? What do you want from me now?"

A little while later: "Laris? Laris, are you here?"