I CAME HOME TO MADISON COUNTY THAT FALL AFTER THE LEAVES had turned and were just about off the trees, and on the road up the mountain I guess I had what you might call a premonition.

“Addie,” a voice said somewheres in my mind, “when you get up there things ain’t going to be the same as they was when you left.” And for some reason, and I can’t say why, I knew I wasn’t going to find my great-aunt alive.

The place was just as still and quiet as it could be—no smoke coming up out of the chimney, nothing but weeds and a shriveled-up crop in the ground. I listened to the wind tumbling through the dead stalks in the field, and I remember that it put me in mind of hearing paper trash blow along the sidewalk in the town I’d just left from. If I’d have closed my eyes I might’ve thought I was right back in downtown Asheville carrying a heap of dirty laundry down a lamplit street instead of lugging my own little piece of luggage and a purse padded with a couple bills and some loose coins up the hill toward home.

Sure enough, I found her in the bed by the cold fireplace covered up to her neck with all the quilts she’d made. I can’t say just how long she’d been dead, but I’ve seen pictures of those Egyptian kings after they find them in their tombs, and I think it’s fair to say she was on her way to that. But she’d took the time to plait her hair, and it’s because of that that I can fool myself into remembering that she looked just like a little girl laying there with those tight gray pigtails splayed out on the pillow beside her. If she’d still been alive and it had been somebody else laying there, even a stranger, I think I would’ve cried just for seeing a dead body. But it wasn’t nobody else but her and there wasn’t nobody else there but me, so I figured there wasn’t much use in all that carrying on.

Then, at that time, I couldn’t believe she’d been laid up dead for who knows how long and there hadn’t been nobody coming up to check on the old woman and the little girl living on top of Parker Mountain. I found out later that folks had in their minds all kinds of no-count ideas about me and her living up there alone. They said she ran a still out there in the woods and had me out selling liquor to men on the other side of the mountain down near Greenville, Tennessee. The kids up there thought we were witches hiding out and eating the fingers and toes of little boys we caught on the land. With people holding truck in ideas like that, I reckon it makes pretty good sense that they’d stay as far away from us as they could.

I’d always known she wanted to be buried with her people up in the field above the cabin where they’d buried family for years. She’d take me up there on Decoration Day, and we’d sweep the stones clean and clear what grass and weeds there was growing up around them. She’d lead us a little service under a stand of oaks up there, sing songs, say a prayer or two. From that high up you could see the county rolling away from you to the east, and if you turned and looked around the other way you could see the range running clear to Tennessee. It was a right pretty place, and I figured that was where I’d lay her to rest.

Now, I didn’t know the first thing about burying a body, and I for sure didn’t know a thing about building no coffin. But I did know how to dig me a hole, though, and that’s just what I did that next morning on top of the hill. I climbed up there just as the sun was breaking good on the ridge to the east, and I laid into that ground with a pickax and an old shovel. I didn’t stop digging until that hole was as deep as I was tall, and even then I knew that it wasn’t quite deep enough, but I was just too wore out to keep on.

After I finished I set off down the mountain and stopped at the first cabin where it looked like people were living. When I got close I seen a woman out in the field, and I called out to her.

“Ma’am,” I said, “I hate to bother you.” I looked on the other side of the field and seen an old man coming up out of the barn. He seemed like he was surprised to see a girl like me walking up the road to his place. That woman looked at him, and then she bent down to her work again. The old man made his way across the yard toward me so slow I thought he might not ever make it.

“What is it you’re needing?” he asked me once he was close enough. He had on him an old pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, and through those glasses I could see how worn his eyes looked, like he’d spent his whole lifetime squinting up at the sun.

“I hate to bother you,” I said again. “I live up the road a piece with my aunt—”

“I know who you are,” he said. I shut my mouth quick, and he just stared down at me. Then he turned his head and spit a brown stream of tobacco juice into the grass beside his boot.

“Well, I just came in from Asheville yesterday evening, and I found her passed away. I’m down here wondering if I could borrow—”

“What took her?” he asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “I reckon it might have been this flu. But I can’t figure out how. I’m sure you know folks up on this mountain here didn’t have too much to do with her. I don’t know how she could’ve caught it with nobody stopping by to see her, her not having no friends that I know of.” He looked at the ground for a minute, and then he spit another stream of juice into the grass and rubbed it in with the toe of his boot. “I need to borrow some tools from somebody so I can fix up something fit to bury her in,” I said.

He looked up from the ground out to where his wife stood in the field. She’d quit working and was looking over at us, like she’d been able to hear us talking to each other from all the way across the yard.

“I’ve got cash money,” I told him. “If that’s what it’ll take, then I’m ready to spend it.” He looked back at me.

“There ain’t no need for that,” he said. “You go on and lay her out. We’ll be up there with it in the morning.” He turned, and I watched him walk back toward the barn. The woman was staring at me from the field. I raised my hand to her.

“Thank y’all!” I hollered.

I BEDDED DOWN IN THE BACK ROOM WITH HER STILL OUT THERE IN the bed by the fireplace, and that night I had me a dream. I can tell you that I ain’t never had such a dream before in my life, and not since have I remembered one so clearly.

It was dusk and I was walking up the hill from down there in the bottomland where the river snakes its way west to Tennessee. In the dream I wore some kind of baptismal robe that was so long that it drug along behind me in that dark, black mud, and I can remember just as plain as day looking down to see where it was still wet around the hem from me being in the river. It looked like I’d only stepped ankle-deep into the water and then changed my mind and walked right out, because in my dream the rest of me was dry and I didn’t have no memory of being dunked under that cold water. No memory of any prayers being prayed over me and no ringing in my ears from the testament of faith I’d have likely been expected to share.

I didn’t know just where I was at first, but the sun had sunk down below the hill that I was walking toward, and the whole country out there was just as quiet as it could be. It was then, with my back to the river, that I got the sense that somebody was following me, that somebody was right there on my heels going up that hill right along behind me. I stopped walking, and I turned around and I could hear my robe dragging over the grass and I could feel my bare feet stepping on that wet cotton hem. When I looked behind me, there was Jesus. He had on him a blue robe that was as dark as pitch where it was soaked through from the waist down, and I knew he’d been all the way out there in that water just waiting on me, and somehow or another I’d decided not to go out and meet him.