"She seems more like herself today than she has in a week.
Time you and Jewel get back, she'll be setting up."
"You ought to know," Jewel says.
"You been here often enough looking at her.
You or your folks."
Vernon looks at him.
Jewel's eyes look like pale wood in his high-blooded face.
He is a head taller than any of the rest of us, always was.
I told them that's why ma always whipped him and petted him more.
Because he was peakling around the house more.
That's why she named him Jewel I told them.
"Shut up, Jewel," pa says, but as though he is not listening much.
He gazes out across the land, rubbing his knees.
"You could borrow the loan of Vernon's team and we could catch up with you," I say.
"If she didn't wait for us."
"Ah, shut your goddamn mouth," Jewel says.
"She'll want to go in ourn," pa says.
He rubs his knees.
"Dont ere a man mislike it more."
"It's laying there, watching Cash whittle on that damn . . ." Jewel says.
He says it harshly, savagely, but he does not say the word.
Like a little boy in the dark to flail his courage and suddenly aghast into silence by his own noise.
"She wanted that like she wants to go in our own wagon," pa says.
"She'll rest easier for knowing it's a good one, and private.
She was ever a private woman.
You know it well."
“Then let it be private," Jewel says.
"But how the hell can you expect it to be—" he looks at the back of pa's head, his eyes like pale wooden eyes.
"Sho," Vernon says, "she'll hold on till it's finished.
She'll hold on till everything's ready, till her own good time.
And with the roads like they are now, it wont take you no time to get her to town."
"It's fixing up to rain," pa says.
"I am a luckless man.
I have ever been."
He rubs his hands on his knees.
"It's that durn doctor, liable to come at any time.
I couldn't get word to him till so late.
If he was to come tomorrow and tell her the time was nigh, she wouldn't wait, I know her.
Wagon or no wagon, she wouldn't wait.
Then she'd be upset, and I wouldn't upset her for the living world.
With that family burying-ground in Jefferson and them of her blood waiting for her there, she'll be impatient.
I promised my word me and the boys would get her there quick as mules could walk it, so she could rest quiet."
He rubs his hands on his knees.
"No man ever misliked it more."
"If everybody wasn't burning hell to get her there," Jewel says in that harsh, savage voice.
"With Cash all day long right under the window, hammering and sawing at that—"
"It was her wish," pa says.
"You got no affection nor gentleness for her.
You never had.
We would be beholden to no man," he says, "me and her.