shyly out onto the swept ground

But Sadie turned to them and her hard eyes were bright. “She knows ye,” she said quietly. “Come on over.” And they climbed slowly and shyly out onto the swept ground. “I’ll tell her about the rest a yuns in a minute,” Sadie said. “Don’t want to mix her up,” Ralph explained, and they all nodded. It seemed to Rufus like a long walk over to the old woman because they were all moving so carefully and shyly; it was almost like church. “Don’t holler,” Aunt Sadie was advising his parents, “hit only skeers her. Just talk loud and plain right up next her ear.” “I know,” his mother said. “My mother is very deaf, too.” “Yeah,” his father said. And he bent down close against her ear. “Granmaw?” he called, and he drew a little away, where she could see him, while his wife and his children looked on, each holding one of the mother’s hands. She looked straight into his eyes and her eyes and her face never changed, a look as if she were gazing at some small point at a great distance, with complete but idle intensity, as if what she was watching was no concern of hers. His father leaned forward again and gently kissed her on the mouth, and drew back again where she could see him well, and smiled a little, anxiously. Her face restored itself from his kiss like grass that has been lightly stepped on; her eyes did not alter. Her skin looked like brown-marbled stone over which water has worked for so long that it is as smooth and blind as soap. He leaned to her ear again. “I’m Jay,” he said. “John Henry’s boy.” Her hands crawled in her skirt: every white bone and black vein showed through the brown-splotched skin; the wrinkled knuckles were like pouches; she wore a red rubber guard ahead of her wedding ring. Her mouth opened and shut and they heard her low, dry croaking, but her eyes did not change. They were bright in their thin shadow, but they were as impersonally bright as two perfectly shaped eyes of glass. “I figure she know you,” Sadie said quietly.