her, except they had
funerals over you then. I knowed being a corpse must be some sort of
a big disadvantage 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 was open when I come by, if the door WAS locked. Did you see him
crawl through the little side window, Danny?"

I nodded. They wasn't nothing else fur me to do.

"But YOU hain't tall enough to look through that there window," says
another one to me. "How could you see into that shop, Danny?"

I didn't know, so I didn't say nothing at all; I jest sniffled.

"They is a store box right in under that window," says another one.
"Danny must have clumb onto that store box and looked in after he seen
Hank come down the road and crawl through the window. Did you scramble
onto the store box and look in, Danny?"

I jest nodded agin.

"And what was it you seen him do? How did he kill himself?" they all
asts to oncet.

_I_ didn't know. So I jest bell