Dannys Own Story | Page 6

it happen and had I saw it and where was Hank's corpse?
And Mis' Rogers she says, "What's Danny been doing now, Elmira?"
me being always up to some- thing.
Elmira she turned around and seen her, and she gives a whoop and then
hollers out: "Hank is dead!" and throws her apern over her head and
sets right down in the path and boo-hoos like a baby. And I bellers
louder.
Mis' Rogers, she never waited to ast nothing more. She seen she had a
piece of news, and she's bound to be the first to spread it, like they is
always a lot of women wants to be in them country towns. She run
right acrost the road to where the Alexan- derses lived. Mis' Alexander,
she seen her coming and unhooked the screen door, and Mis' Rogers
she hollers out before she reached the porch:
"Hank Walters is dead."
And then she went footing it up the street. They was a black plume on
her bunnet which nodded the same as on a hearse, and she was into and
out of seven front yards in five minutes.
Mis' Alexander, she runs acrost the street to where we was, and she
kneels down and puts her arm around Elmira, which was still rocking
back and forth in the path, and she says:
"How do you know he's dead, Elmira? I seen him not more'n an hour

ago."
"Danny seen it all," says Elmira.
Mis' Alexander turned to me, and wants to know what happened and
how it happened and where it happened. But I don't want to say nothing
about that cistern. So I busts out bellering fresher'n ever, and I says:
"He was drunk, and he come home drunk, and he done it then, and
that's how he cone it," I says.
"And you seen him?" she says. I nodded.
"Where is he?" says she and Elmira, both to oncet.
But I was scared to say nothing about that there cistern, so I jest bawled
some more.
"Was it in the blacksmith shop?" says Mis' Alexander. I nodded my
head agin and let it go at that.
"Is he in there now?" asts Mis' Alexander. I nodded agin. I hadn't meant
to give out no untrue stories. But a kid will always tell a lie, not
meaning to tell one, if you sort of invite him with questions like that,
and get him scared the way you're acting. Besides, I says to myself, "so
long as Hank has turned into a corpse and that makes him dead, what's
the difference whether he's in the black- smith shop or not?" Fur I
hadn't had any plain idea, being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to
be dead, and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neither, except they
had funerals over you then. I knowed being a corpse must be some sort
of a big disad- vantage from the way Elmira always says keep away
from that cistern door or I'll be one. But if they was going to be a
funeral in our house, I'd feel kind o' important, too. They didn't have
em every day in our town, and we hadn't never had one of our own.
So Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house, both a-crying, and
Mis' Alexander trying to comfort her, and me a tagging along behind
holding onto Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a few

minutes all them women Mis' Rogers has told come filing into that
room, one at a time, looking sad. Only Old Mis' Primrose, she was
awful late getting there because she stopped to put on her bunnet she
always wore to funerals with the black Paris lace on it her cousin
Arminty White had sent her from Chicago.
When they found out Hank had come home with licker in him and done
it himself, they was all excited, and they all crowds around and asts me
how, except two as is holding onto Elmira's hands which sets moaning
in a chair. And they all asts me questions as to what I seen him do,
which if they hadn't I wouldn't have told em the lies I did. But they
egged me on to it.
Says one woman: "Danny, you seen him do it in the blacksmith shop?"
I nodded.
"But how did he get in?" sings out another woman. "The door was
locked on the outside with a padlock jest now when I come by. He
couldn't of killed himself in there and locked the door on the outside."
I didn't see how he could of done that myself, so I begun to bawl agin
and said nothing at all.
"He must of crawled through that little side window," says another one.
"It