Part II, Chapters 4–5: "A Worn Path" by Eudora Welty

This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air, that seemed meditative like the chirping of a solitary little bird.

This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air, that seemed meditative like the chirping of a solitary little bird.

Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket.

Under her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the brush as if to rouse up any hiding things.

In the furrow she made her way along.

"Ghost," she said sharply, "who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by."

At last she came to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass blew between the red ruts.

"I walking in their sleep," she said, nodding her head vigorously.

A black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch.

"He ain't scared of nobody. He a big black dog." She whispered, "Sic him!"
"Watch me get rid of that cur," said the man.

She inclined her head in the red rag.

Then she smelled wood-smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep steps.

"Here I be," she said. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body.

But Phoenix only waited and stared straight ahead, her face very solemn and withdrawn into rigidity.

"All right. The doctor said as long as you came to get it, you could have it," said the nurse. "But it's an obstinate case."

"We is the only two left in the world. He suffer and it don't seem to put him back at all. He got a sweet look. He going to last. He wear a little patch quilt and peep out holding his mouth open like a little bird. I remembers so plain now. I not going to forget him again, no, the whole enduring time. I could tell him from all the others in creation."