On the edge of the ring of firelight the men had gathered.
For tools they had a shovel and a mattock.
Pa marked out the ground—eight feet long and three feet wide.
The work went on in relays.
Pa chopped the earth with the mattock and then Uncle John shoveled it out.
Al chopped and Tom shoveled, Noah chopped and Connie shoveled.
And the hole drove down, for the work never diminished in speed. The shovels of dirt flew out of the hole in quick spurts.
When Tom was shoulder deep in the rectangular pit, he said,
“How deep, Pa?”
“Good an’ deep. A couple feet more.
You get out now, Tom, and get that paper wrote.”
Tom boosted himself out of the hole and Noah took his place.
Tom went to Ma, where she tended the fire.
“We got any paper an’ pen, Ma?”
Ma shook her head slowly,
“No-o.
That’s one thing we didn’ bring.” She looked toward Sairy.
And the little woman walked quickly to her tent.
She brought back a Bible and a half pencil.
“Here,” she said.
“They’s a clear page in front.
Use that an’ tear it out.” She handed book and pencil to Tom.
Tom sat down in the firelight.
He squinted his eyes in concentration, and at last wrote slowly and carefully on the end paper in big clear letters:
“This here is William James Joad, dyed of a stroke, old old man.
His fokes bured him becaws they got no money to pay for funerls.
Nobody kilt him.
Jus a stroke an he dyed.”
He stopped. “Ma, listen to this here.” He read it slowly to her.
“Why, that soun’s nice,” she said. “Can’t you stick on somepin from Scripture so it’ll be religious?
Open up an’ git a-sayin’ somepin outa Scripture.”
“Got to be short,” said Tom. “I ain’t got much room lef’ on the page.”
Sairy said,
“How ’bout
‘God have mercy on his soul’?”
“No,” said Tom. “Sounds too much like he was hung.
I’ll copy somepin.” He turned the pages and read, mumbling his lips, saying the words under his breath. “Here’s a good short one,” he said. “‘An’ Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord.”’
“Don’t mean nothin’,” said Ma. “Long’s you’re gonna put one down, it might’s well mean somepin.”
Sairy said,
“Turn to Psalms, over further.
You kin always get somepin outa Psalms.”
Tom flipped the pages and looked down the verses.
“Now here is one,” he said. “This here’s a nice one, just blowed full a religion:
‘Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.’
How’s that?”
“That’s real nice,” said Ma. “Put that one in.”
Tom wrote it carefully.
Ma rinsed and wiped a fruit jar and Tom screwed the lid down tight on it.
“Maybe the preacher ought to wrote it,” he said.
Ma said,