the cupboard and the bread-pan from the cold stove, and I stop, watching the door.
“Where’s Vardaman?” Cash says. In the lamp his sawdusted arms look like sand.
“I don’t know. I ain’t seen him.”
“Peabody’s team run away. See if you can find Vardaman. The horse will let him catch him.”
“Well. Tell them to come to supper.”
I cannot see the barn. I said, I don’t know how to worry. I don’t know how to cry. I tried, but I can’t. After a while the sound of the saw comes around, coming dark along the ground in the dust-dark. Then I can see him, going up and down above the plank.
“You come in to supper,” I say. “Tell him.” He could do everything for me. And he don’t know it. He is his guts and I am my guts. And I am Lafe’s guts. That’s it. I don’t see why he didn’t stay in town. We are country people not as good as town people. I don’t see why he didn’t. Then I can see the top of the barn. The cow stands at the foot of the path, lowing. When I turn back, Cash is gone.
I carry the buttermilk in. Pa and Cash and he are at the table.
“Where’s that big fish Bud caught, sister?” he says.
I set the milk on the table. “I never had no time to cook it.”
“Plain turnip greens is mighty spindling eating for a man my size,” he says. Cash is eating. About his head the print of his hat is sweated into his hair. His shirt is blotched with sweat. He has not washed his hands and arms.