'Now you just let us all do everything, Mary,' said Aunty Em. 'Don't take it on yourself again. This day is for you, above anyone else.' Aunty Em did not look at or talk to Bob Jewell. Aunty Em and Will's older brother, Harry, helped Mary Jewell up into the wagon. Max glared at Dorothy.
It was the cold of the Devil, hard as a sword. Their fingers, their toes, their eyes, were gnawed by the cold. Dorothy's eyes ran with water, stinging with cold. Aunty Em got back into the wagon and thought Dorothy was weeping for her friend. She patted her hand.
'We must learn to love what God takes away,' murmured Aunty Em. She was recognized by everyone to be a good woman. No one would ever believe that she wasn't. Dorothy let her think what she liked, and scowled.
Dorothy was trying to feel what she was supposed to feel. She knew she was supposed to cry and carry on and need comforting. The thought of Will made her go hard and cold like stone, and that worried her. She knew she was supposed to feel more than that. The thought of mourning made her feel weary and stale. The ride there and back would be boring, and she would have to be good. She began to rock back and forth to occupy herself.
Aunty Em held her still. 'Try to bear up, Dodo,' she said. 'We're nearly there.' They were not nearly there at all.
Dorothy hated the whole business. Ahead of them for miles she could see other wagons, lined up along the road, going to the funeral, as black as beetles.
There was a picture frame behind Dorothy's knees. Each time the wagon slipped on the icy road, it knocked against her legs. It was a flower under glass, a flower made out of Dorothy's own hair. It made her feel sick.
'That will be your present to Mrs. Jewell,' Aunty Em had told her. She had written a note on it. 'From a young friend,' it said.
Dorothy had made another present of her own. She kept it folded up inside her mitten. She would give the present to Mrs. Jewell herself, try to tell her, if she could, why Will had died. Nobody had given Dorothy a chance to tell her, even though Mrs. Jewell had said she didn't understand why. Dorothy thought she wanted to understand.
Dorothy had seen Zeandale ahead of them as soon as they had left the Jewells' farm and got onto the road. Zeandale seemed to creep toward them forever and never get any closer. The gray road, the gray sky, the gray earth, did not seem to change. It took on close to an hour.
All there was to Zeandale, the village, were a few houses and a post office store. EVERYTHING FOR SALE, said a fancy sign outside the shop. Tin tubs and pans and horse clothes were hung around the porch. The schoolhouse looked like any other building and had no steeple. Wagons were gathered all around it.
Dorothy knew Aunty Em didn't like having to come to Zeandale. She knew Aunty Em would be looked down on by the people here. She knew it from the stiff-backed way Aunty Em climbed down from the rickety wagon and from the way she folded up the hides, with a series of smart snaps, as if they were something rare and precious, to be protected. She stowed them under the seat quickly, so no one could see them.
'Now, Dorothy, the people here don't know us, so we got to show them that we're worthy of respect.' The truth was that people in Zeandale did know them and only too well. The people here knew how small the house was and how poor the farm. In Manhattan, Aunty Em was still a Branscomb, the educated daughter of a local dignitary. At least, that was what Aunty Em thought. No one from Manhattan was ever invited back to see the unimproved homestead or the unimproved Henry Gulch.
Aunty Em swiped at the shoulders of Dorothy's black dress and pulled down hard on the bottom of the jacket. The dress was slightly lopsided. It had been one of Aunty Em's own.
'It was a sacrifice, cutting down this dress, but it was for your friend, Dorothy, and I was pleased to do it.' Aunty Em's eyes flickered toward the Jewells, who were helping their mama toward the church. Aunty Em knelt down and smoothed the collar and shoulders and looked into Dorothy's face and breathed out wreaths of icy vapor.
'And you mustn't talk, child, not a word. We look at the good, Dorothy, and we turn our eyes from the bad. What Wilbur did was the greatest sin anybody can do. We are burying that sin today. The good men do lives on after them.'
'Yes, Aunty,' said Dorothy. The rule was: When you don't understand, agree.
Aunty Em pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes into an expression of cramped sweetness. She stroked Dorothy's face. 'You are my own sweet sister's child,' she said, with misgiving.
'Yes, Aunty.' Dorothy's toes and fingers ached with the cold and she wanted to get inside.
Aunty Em was still scanning her face for imperfections. 'Can't see a shadow of that man at all,' she said. That man meant Dorothy's father.
'Yes, Aunty,' said Dorothy.
The funeral was being held in the schoolhouse. Zeandale had gone to the effort of building a church, but the roof had blown off in a cyclone almost as soon as it was finished. Aunty Em kept an eye on the front door. When the Jewells finished maneuvering themselves through it, she stood up, and finally, finally, she and Dorothy could go inside. They walked together hand in hand; Uncle Henry followed with the framed hair flower. The Kansas earth underfoot was frozen as hard as rock. Dorothy tripped and stumbled; Aunty Em hauled her up by the hand. No one was to fall.
Dorothy knew that there had been some kind of trouble. There was a graveyard in the hills outside of the town. Some people had not wanted Wilbur buried there because he had killed himself. Dorothy wondered if they had done something to the ground to close it against him. Would God freeze the ground to stop someone from being buried?
They went into the schoolhouse, and it was colder inside than outside. The little stove had been stoked that morning, but all the heat rose up into the ceiling. As thick as a muddy river, currents of cold air flowed about their feet. The walls were white; the windows were white. The mourners had to sit on school benches. The place was full of adults all in black like some giant species of insect. There were children, too, some of them from Sunflower School, where Wilbur had gone. They were all real quiet and hung their heads and scowled. Dorothy knew that scowl. It was the Indian scowl. You made it when something didn't make sense.
There was a wall of memorials. In midwinter, there were no flowers. There were woven pine branches and pillows stuffed with potpourri and scrolls with writing on them. Aunty and Uncle filed past them. They looked a long
