My family were the only white people there. We had driven two miles down a dusty road flanked by dense pine woods to reach the clearing that held a small unpainted church. Negroes dressed in black or white stood outside in the sand; and when we left our car, I fingered my blue corduroy, embarrassed. Everyone stopped talking and watched us. Some I recognized because they worked on our farm, and I raised my hand to them.

My father spoke to several other men and women. I had never before seen the man he addressed as Esau; but stooped and slight, an old man whose shapeless jacket hung straight down from his shoulders, he looked exactly as I'd come to picture Attie's worthless husband. Four years earlier, during the summer when I preferred Attie to everyone else— especially my sister Lucy—talk of Esau had confused my feelings toward Attie. To think, until after I visited her at home that once, I had actually envisioned him as a wild-haired demon wielding a cane—this baldheaded man whose trembling hands held only a worn black hat.

The October day was beautiful; the air was soft, and the sky was almost dark blue. It was the kind of morning I would have spent climbing trees when I was seven or eight. But entering the dark church was like entering another season. The smell of carnations hung thick as smoke in the heat. A man in a white robe hurried to us and shook my father's hand. Sweat slicked his large round face. Breathlessly, he seated us on the front pew, from where I could have reached out and touched the side of the open casket. The church then filled quickly. Some men stood, and some women sat on folding