“She had different notions from Lindy, an’ that’s what Nathe wuzn’t expectin’,” continued Uncle Ranz. “She never ast no questions, an’ nobody told her nothin’, but she looked around fer hersef, an’ it didn’t take her long to make up her mind about Ann. When they’d been married about six weeks, she told Nathe she believed she’d go fer a visit to see how her folks wuz gittin’ on. Nathe said all right, only he’d ruther she wouldn’t stay long an’ it harvest-time. He hitched up, an’ took her to Scatter, an’ she got on the train an’ never come back. Nathe went over to Waynesville after her, but he had to come home by hissef. Seemed like he wuz tuk down about it, an’ never got back his spirit. ’Twasn’t long till he couldn’t ride over to Ann’s, an’ after that he went off fast. Angie Sue left her second husband, an’ come to live with her daddy, an’ Herb’s wife wuz dead an’ him an’ all the childern wuz there, an’ pore ol’ Nathe had to die ’thout anybody in the house to make things run easy an’ peaceable. “Angie Sue is claimin’ ever’thing her daddy had fer takin’ keer o’ him, but ef it hadn’t been fer the things Ann cooked up an’ slipped over to him by me an’ the neighbors, he wouldn’t ’a’ teched a bite fer three weeks ’fore he died. Angie Sue quit takin’ her stuff in to him, ’cause all he’d say wuz: ‘Git out o’ here with that pizen.’ The day he wuz dyin’ he sent me to tell Ann that Bake would take keer o’ her. She knowed that, but he wanted to be sendin’ some word. She wuz settin’ by the winder holdin’ something in her hand when I come inter the yard. I went to the winder, an’ she paled off a little an’ ast ef he wuz gone. When I told her what he wanted me to, she says: ‘You give him this. He’ll know what it is.’ I looked, an’ it wuz a big ol’ shiny chestnut, so light I knowed they wuzn’t nuthin’ in it but dust. ‘I picked it up,’ she says, ‘that day about a minute ’fore Lu saw us.’ I took it, but Nathe wuz dead when I got back home.” III At Scatter the next morning Serena and I waited for the up-train to Beebread. A little mother and her big son were waiting for the down-train going east. Serena went over to the mother, who was Ann Lindsay, and they chatted softly. I kept aside, not precipitating an introduction. Was she not a nugatory survival, who, by all laws of fitness, ought to have been on the hill ’longside the others? But the “others” would have removed their dusty skirts; and Bake had said that Jenny would be good to her. That expectation was apparent, I thought, in her quiet assurance. And suddenly, unreasonably, I felt that her departure was a desertion. I recalled the futile Angie Sue, the innocuous Herb and Sam, the negligible Rosie, and thought of Nathe with all his vital insistence buried so “proper” in an untended grave. Then I looked at big Bake, whose resolute posterity would shoulder through, undoubtedly, to the end of a needy world. Here, for the breath-time of earth, at least, Uncle Nathe might hold oblivion in check.