'It certainly will,' said the lady. 'My daughter will be getting supper on now. The married one. I left them a cold hen, barbecued the way I like to do it.'
Joan went back to looking out the window. She stared steadily at the clay banks that rose high and red along the side of the road, and the tall thin tobacco barns from which little strings of brightly dressed women were scattering home for supper. Who would take her place tomorrow at the tobacco table? She stopped watching the barns. All around her in the bus, people were settled firmly in their seats, with their hands relaxed on the arm rests and their heads tipped against the white starched bibs on the backs of the seats. They talked to one another in murmuring voices that mingled with the sound of the motor. A little boy was playing a tonette.
'I'm going to my other daughter,' the old lady told her. 'The one that never married. She has a kidney ailment.'
'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Joan.
'She's in terrible pain, and there's no one to take care of her.'
Out of the corner of her eye Joan saw the Larksville paper she had bought, folded neatly and tucked down between her seat and the wall of the bus. She picked it up quickly and unfolded it, and the old lady turned away again.
There would be nothing interesting in the paper, but she read it anyway. She began with the first page and read through the whole paper methodically, not even skipping the ladies' meeting announcements or the advertisements.
There had been one birth in Larksville this week, she saw, and two deaths. The first death was Jones, Laramie D., whom she had never heard of, but she read all about him anyway – the circumstances of his death, the highlights of his life, the list of relatives who had survived him. The second death was Pike, Janie Rose. The name hit into her stomach, as if she hadn't known of the death until this instant. She started to pass over it, but then she went back to it and read it through:
Pike, Janie Rose. At County Hospital, in her sixth year,
of internal injuries caused by an accident. Beloved
daughter of Mr and Mrs Roy J. Pike, sister of Simon
Lockwood Pike. Funeral was held from Collins
Memorial Home, July 16, interment in family cemetery.
She read it twice, but it seemed unreal still, something vague and far off. Nothing that bad could happen. When she had finished with it a second time she folded the paper very carefully in half, so that the obituaries were out of sight, and then went on to the rest of the paper. She read very closely now, even moving her lips, so as to shut out all thought of anything she had read before. 'Teller-Hokes Wedding Held in First Baptist Church,' she read, and although neither name meant anything to her she was careful to find out exactly what the bride wore and who her guests were. Next came the memorial notices, ringed in black like the obituaries. She had never looked at the memorial notices before. She read about someone named Auntie Peg Myers, who had passed away on July 16,1937, and was dearly remembered by her two nieces. Then she read about Nathan Martin, who had been taken from his wife in 1941. For him there was a quotation. 'Too dearly beloved ever to be forgotten,' it said. Further down, for other people, there were little poems, but Joan stopped reading. She had a sudden picture of all the years of this century, stretching far back in a chain of newsprint that grew yellower and yellower as the years grew older. 1937 was almost orange, older than she herself was; 1941 was growing brittle at the edges. How would this year look? The print on January was already blurred. And then she pictured how it would be when today was yellowed too, years from now, and the Pikes themselves were buried and Simon an old man. Then on the third week in every July he would print his notice: 'In memory of Janie Rose, who passed away just fifty years ago July 13th. Fondly remembered by her brother Simon.' He would be remembering her as someone very small with spectacles, who had lived in the tacked-on bedroom in back of the house. But he himself would be a grandfather then, and nobody Janie would recognize. How would Simon look in fifty years? Joan tried to think, but all she saw was Simon as he was today -hunching his shoulders up, tucking his head down in that uncertain way he had.
She looked quickly out the window and saw the town of Graham rolling up, and the bus station with its line of coin machines. 'Is this where you get off?' the woman asked her.
'No.'
'Oh. You just sat up so sudden -'
'No,' said Joan, 'but I think I might buy a Coke.'
She stood and wormed her way out past the woman's knees, and as soon as she was out the woman slid quickly over to the window. Joan didn't care. She went down the aisle without looking at anyone, and then descended the bus steps. A team of some kind was waiting to board, a group of boys in white satin wind-breakers with numbers on them, and when Joan stepped down among them they remained stolidly in her path, ignoring her. 'Excuse me,' she said, 'excuse me, please,' and then when no one noticed she shouted, 'Excuse me!' For a minute they stopped talking and stared at her; then they moved aside to let her through. She walked very quickly, holding her head up. Out here she felt thinner and more alone than before, with the team of boys all watching her down the long path to the Coke machine. And when she reached the machine she found she didn't even want a Coke. But she put her dime in anyway, and just as she was reaching for the bottle someone said, 'Ma'am?'
It was a young man in sunglasses, standing beside her and looking straight at her. She felt scared suddenly, even with all those people around (had he been able to see how alone she felt?) and she decided not to answer. Instead she uncapped the Coke bottle and then turned to go.
'Ma'am?' he said again.
She couldn't just leave him there, still asking. 'What is it?' she said.
'Can you show me where the restroom is?'
'Why, it's right inside, I guess. Over there.'
'Where?'
'Over there.'
'I don't see.'
'Over there.'
'I don't see. I'm blind.'
'Oh,' said Joan, and then she just felt silly, and even sadder than before. 'Wait a minute,' she told him. She turned around and saw two bus drivers walking toward her, looking kind and cheerful. When they came even with her she tapped the older driver on the arm and said, 'Um, excuse me.'
'Yes.'
'Can you show this man the restroom? He doesn't see.'
'Why, surely,' said the driver. He smiled at her and then took the blind man by the elbow. 'You come with me,' he said.
'Thank you, sir. Thank you, ma'am.'
'You're welcome,' Joan said.
The other driver stayed behind, next to Joan. He said, 'Can you imagine travelling blind?' and stared after the two men, frowning a little.
'No, I can't' Joan said. She automatically followed the driver's eyes. Now that she looked, she couldn't think why the blind man had frightened her at first. He wore his clothes obediently, as if someone else had put them on him – the neat dark suit with the handkerchief in the pocket, the shoes tied lovingly in double knots. He reminded her of something. For a minute she couldn't think what, and then she remembered and smiled. That slow, trusting way he let himself be guided forward with his hands folded gently in front of him, was like Simon during the first year she'd lived there, when he was six and still had to be awakened at night and taken to the bathroom so he wouldn't wet his bed. He had gone just that obediently, but with his eyes closed and the shadows of some dream still flickering across his face. (You couldn't stop walking with him for a minute, not in a doorway nor going around the bend in the hall, or he would think he had reached the bathroom and proceed to go right then and there.) He had held his elbows in close to his body that way, too, against the coolness of the night. Joan stopped smiling and looked down at her feet.