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"What's the matter?" he asked loudly. "Something wrong, Mary?""There is maybe," she said. "Your father has a bit of the fever."

Martin sat up in his chair. "So?" he said.

"You know, he is pretty weak, and sometimes when a man is puny the fever can take him quickly."

Martin picked up his glass, which was on the floor by his chair, and had a sip of its liquor. He was a strong, stocky man, thick waisted. His hair hung down long and uncombed onto his neck. "I'm sure you know how to treat a fever, Mary, as well as any doctor."

"Yes, Master Martin," she said. "I do. But your father wanted the preacher to come, you know."

He looked at her, scowling. "Mary, you don't expect me to go out in this weather!"

"No, Master," she said stubbornly, "I don't expect. I just thought you would want to know." She turned her large, thick body slowly, like a heavy ship tacking into the wind, and began out of the room.

"Mary," he said, and she stopped. "Did the fever just come on?"

"It just did," she said, turning back to him but not letting him see her eyes.

"Don't you think it might pass?"

"It might."

"Then let's wait a little longer. Even if I got to Huntsville in this rain, the preacher wouldn't come before the morning."

"The river might be up," she said.

"That's true," he said. "Then I'd be stuck there in town and no help to you either. Let's wait. I'll send Brady up to help you.

"Brady was the youngest son. Ten years old, he ran wild on the plantation and had never gone to school. His mother had died at his birth, so Mary had raised him, if anyone had. He came upstairs and sat in a chair in the old man's room. He was towheaded and impatient like all the Nicholses. After Brady had bothered Mary with a dozen questions and kicked at the wall half a hundred times she sent him off to get the dinner bell for her. She said she would use it to call him if she needed him.

Mary sat by the sleeping old man, wiping his sweat with a cloth. The rain continued to pound. Late in the evening Martin came in, yawning. He turned up the light and looked closely at his father's sweat-beaded face, keeping his hands at his sides, not touching the old man. "He looks all right," he said. "He'll be fine, don't you think, Mary? Just a passing fever from this damp air."

She responded with a grunt that could pass for anything.

Martin sat down in the chair that Brady had used. "I'm going to go to bed, Mary. If anything happens in the night, you call me. If he's bad in the morning, I'll go get the preacher."

"If he goes that way, he won't need a preacher. Except for a funeral."

He scowled at her. "Listen to that rain. Now Mary, you can stop looking at me that way. I am not going out for an old man's whim. The preacher won't come now anyway. Methodist though he be, he is not a complete fool."

"The man said he would come when it was time."

"Well, how do you know it is time? Do you think I can go and say, 'Reverend, come on with me, let's swim the creek in this storm because an old black woman says it is time'? Do you think I can say that?"

Mary did not answer him. The rain sounded like sand being thrown violently against the house."

Well, I am not going to say that. I am not going to ride to Huntsville in this rain in the dark. On a fool's errand."

"That's right," Mary said finally. "You get some sleep, Master." She had that ability, to go along with a master's authority yet reserve the judgment of her own mind.

This aggravated Martin, and he could not help himself; he still tried to win the argument. "If he is going to pass on, the preacher cannot stop it. Why does he want the preacher? The man has no power over life and death."

She grunted assent. "That's right. Your father just wanted to talk, you know."

"He can't talk anyway. Now can he?"

"No, Master. He hasn't got any talk in him just now."Martin stood up and took a long, silent, clinical look at his father. "He looks all right to me," he said, and went out. Continued on next pageReprinted with permission of Thomas Nelson Publishers.

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January (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44