She sits quite still, her possessions gathered into her hand for dismounting. She is looking ahead, to where the road curves on and away, crossslanted with shadows. “I reckon I got a few days left.”
“Sho. You got plenty of time yet. Only you are liable to have some company at any time now that can’t walk. You come on home with me.” He puts the mules into motion without waiting for a reply. The wagon enters the lane, the dim road. The woman sits back, though she still holds the fan, the bundle, the shoes.
“I wouldn’t be beholden,” she says. “I wouldn’t trouble.”
“Sho,” Armstid says. “You come on with me.” For the first time the mules move swiftly of their own accord. “Smelling corn,” Armstid says, thinking, ‘But that’s the woman of it. Her own self one of the first ones to cut the ground from under a sister woman, she’ll walk the public country herself without shame because she knows that folks, menfolks, will take care of her. She don’t care nothing about womenfolks. It wasn’t any woman that got her into what she don’t even call trouble. Yes, sir. You just let one of them get married or get into trouble without being married, and right then and there is where she secedes from the woman race and species and spends the balance of her life trying to get joined up with the man race. That’s why they dip snuff and smoke and want to vote.’
When the wagon passes the house and goes on toward the barnlot, his wife is watching it from the front door. He does not look in that direction; he does not need to look to know that she will be there, is there. ‘Yes,’ he thinks with sardonic ruefulness, turning the mules into the open gate, ‘I know exactly what she is going to say. I reckon I know exactly.’ He halts the wagon, he does not need to look to know that his wife is now in the kitchen, not watching now; just waiting. He halts the wagon. “You go on to the house,” he says; he has already descended and the woman is now climbing slowly down, with that inward listening deliberation. “When you meet somebody, it will be Martha. I’ll be in when I feed the stock.” He does not watch her cross the lot and go on toward the kitchen. He does not need to. Step by step with her he enters the kitchen door also and comes upon the woman who now watches the kitchen door exactly as she had watched the wagon pass from the front one. ‘I reckon I know exactly what she will say,’ he thinks.
He takes the team out and waters and stalls and feeds them, and lets the cows in from the pasture. Then he goes to the kitchen. She is still there, the gray woman with a cold, harsh, irascible face, who bore five children in six years and raised them to man—and womanhood. She is not idle. He does not look at her. He goes to the sink and fills a pan from the pail and turns his sleeves back. “Her name is Burch,” he says. “At least that’s what she says the fellow’s name is that she is hunting for. Lucas Burch. Somebody told her back down the road a ways that he is in Jefferson now.” He begins to wash, his back to her. “She come all the way from Alabama, alone and afoot, she says.”
Mrs. Armstid does not look around. She is busy at the table. “She’s going to quit being alone a good while before she sees Alabama again,” she says.
“Or that fellow Burch either, I reckon.” He is quite busy at the sink, with the soap and water. And he can feel her looking at him, at the back of his head, his shoulders in the shirt of sweatfaded blue. “She says that somebody down at Samson’s told her there is a fellow named Burch or something working at the planing mill in Jefferson.”
“And she expects to find him there. Waiting. With the house all furnished and all.”
He cannot tell from her voice if she is watching him or not now. He towels himself with a split floursack. “Maybe she will. If it’s running away from her he’s after, I reckon he’s going to find out he made a bad mistake when he stopped before he put the Mississippi River between them.” And now he knows that she is watching him: the gray woman not plump and not thin, manhard, workhard, in a serviceable gray garment worn savage and brusque, her hands on her hips, her face like those of generals who have been defeated in battle.
“You men,” she says.
“What do you want to do about it? Turn her out? Let her sleep in the barn maybe?”
“You men,” she says. “You durn men.”
They enter the kitchen together, though Mrs. Armstid is in front. She goes straight to the stove. Lena stands just within the door. Her head is uncovered now, her hair combed smooth. Even the blue garment looks freshened and rested. She looks on while Mrs. Armstid at the stove clashes the metal lids and handles the sticks of wood with the abrupt savageness of a man. “I would like to help,” Lena says.
Mrs. Armstid does not look around. She clashes the stove savagely. “You stay where you are. You keep off your feet now, and you’ll keep off your back a while longer maybe.”
“It would be a beholden kindness to let me help.”
“You stay where you are. I been doing this three times a day for thirty years now. The time when I needed help with it is done passed.” She is busy at the stove, not backlooking. “Armstid says your name is Burch.”
“Yes,” the other says. Her voice is quite grave now, quite quiet. She sits quite still, her hands motionless upon her lap. And Mrs. Armstid does not look around either. She is still busy at the stove. It appears to require an amount of attention out of all proportion to the savage finality with which she built the fire. It appears to engage as much of her attention as if it were an expensive watch.
“Is your name Burch yet?” Mrs. Armstid says.
The young woman does not answer at once. Mrs. Armstid does not rattle the stove now, though her back is still toward the younger woman. Then she turns. They look at one another, suddenly naked, watching one another: the young woman in the chair, with her neat hair and her inert hands upon her lap, and the older one beside the stove, turning, motionless too, with a savage screw of gray hair at the base of her skull and a face that might have been carved in sandstone. Then the younger one speaks.
“I told you false. My name is not Burch yet. It’s Lena Grove.”
They look at one another. Mrs. Armstid’s voice is neither cold nor warm. It is not anything at all. “And so you want to catch up with him so your name will be Burch in time. Is that it?”
Lena is looking down now, as though watching her hands upon her lap. Her voice is quiet, dogged. Yet it is serene. “I don’t reckon I need any promise from Lucas. It just happened unfortunate so, that he had to go away. His plans just never worked out right for him to come back for me like he aimed to. I reckon me and him didn’t need to make word promises. When he found out that night that he would have to go, he—”
“Found out what night? The night you told him about that chap?”
The other does not answer for a moment. Her face is calm as stone, but not hard. Its doggedness has a soft quality, an inwardlighted quality of tranquil and calm unreason and detachment. Mrs. Armstid watches her. Lena is not looking at the other woman while she speaks. “He had done got the word about how he might have to leave a long time before that. He just never told me sooner because he didn’t want to worry me with it. When he first heard about how he might have to leave, he knowed then it would be best to go, that he could get along faster somewhere where the foreman wouldn’t be down on him. But he kept on putting it off. But when this here happened, we couldn’t put it off no longer then. The foreman was down on Lucas because he didn’t like him because Lucas was young and full of life all the time and the foreman wanted Lucas’ job to give it to a cousin of his. But he hadn’t aimed to tell me because it would just worry me. But when this here happened, we couldn’t wait any longer. I was the one that said for him to go. He said he would stay if I said so, whether the foreman treated him right or not. But I said for him to go. He never wanted to go, even then. But I said for him to. To just send me word when he was ready for me to come. And then his plans just never worked out for him to send for me in time, like he aimed. Going away among strangers like that, a young fellow needs time to get settled down. He never knowed that when he left, that he would need more time to get settled down in than he figured on. Especially a young fellow full of life like Lucas, that likes folks and jollifying, and liked by folks in turn. He didn’t know it would take longer than he planned, being young, and folks always after him because he is a hand for laughing and joking, interfering with his work unbeknownst to him because he never wanted to hurt folks’ feelings. And I wanted him to have his last enjoyment, because marriage is different with a young fellow, a lively young fellow, and a woman. It lasts so long with a lively young fellow. Don’t you think so?”