“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 won’t 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. We have never yet been, and she will rest quieter for knowing it and that it was her own blood sawed out the boards and drove the nails. She was ever one to clean up after herself.”
“It means three dollars,” I say. “Do you want us to go, or not?” Pa rubs his knees. “We’ll be back by tomorrow sundown.”
“Well …” pa says. He looks out over the land, awry-haired, mouthing the snuff slowly against his gums.