Free Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro Page A

strawberries they were hulling, to make jam, Auntie Grace spoke breathlessly, but in a calm, musing voice.
    “If a car had come by, wouldn’t you just have wanted to die?”
    Aunt Elspeth took the pins out of her hair and let it down overthe back of her chair. When her hair was pinned up it looked nearly all grey, but when it was loose it showed a great deal of dark, silky brown, mink’s colour. With little snorting sounds of pleasure she shook her head back and forth and drew her spread fingers through her hair, to get rid of the little bits of hay that had flown up, and were sticking in it.
    “Fools we are!” she said.
    Where was Uncle Craig this while? Typing undauntedly, behind his closed windows and pulled-down blinds.
    The squashed hay coil was just the same. But men were walking on the hay-stubble, all in dark suits like tall crows, talking. A wreath of white lilies hung on the front door, which was standing ajar. Mary Agnes came up joyfully smiling and made me stand still while she tied and re-tied my sash. The house and yard were full of people. Relatives from Toronto sat on the verandah, looking benevolent, but voluntarily apart. I was taken and made to speak to them, and avoided looking into the windows behind them, because of Uncle Craig’s body. Ruth McQueen came out carrying a wicker basket of roses, which she set on the verandah railing.
    “There are more flowers than will ever go in the house,” she said, as if this was something we might all grieve for. “I thought I’d set them out here.” She was fair-haired, discreet, wanly solicitous— already an old maid. She knew everyone’s names. She introduced my mother and me to a man and his wife from the southern part of the county. The man was wearing a suit jacket with overalls.
    “He give us our marriage licence,” the woman said proudly.
    My mother said she must go to the kitchen and I followed her, thinking that at least they could not have put Uncle Craig there, where the smells of coffee and food were coming from. Men were in the hall, too, like tree trunks to work your way through. Both doors of the front room were closed, a basket of gladioli set in front of them.
    Aunt Moira, draped in black like a massive, public pillar, was standing over the kitchen table counting teacups.
    “I’ve counted three times and every time I come up with a different number,” she said, as if this was a special misfortune that could happen only to her. “My brain is not able to work today. I can’t stand on my feet much longer.”
    Aunt Elspeth, wearing a wonderful starched and ironed apron, with frills of white lawn, kissed my mother and me. “There now,” she said, backing up from her kiss with a sigh of accomplishment. “Grace is upstairs, freshening her eyes. We just can’t believe it, so many people! Grace said to me, I think half the county is here, and I said what do you mean, half the county, I wouldn’t be surprised if its the whole county! We miss Helen, though. She sent a blanket of lilies.”
    “There ought to be enough, goodness!” she said practically, looking at the teacups. All our good ones and kitchen ones and the ones we borrowed from the church!”
    “Do like at the Poole funeral,” whispered a lady by the table. “She put away her good ones, locked them up and used the ones from the church. Said she wasn’t risking her china.”
    Aunt Elspeth rolled her red-rimmed eyes in appreciation—her usual expression, just tempered by the occasion.
    “The food will hold out anyway. I think there’s enough here to feed the five thousand.”
    I thought so too. Everywhere I looked I saw food. A cold roast of pork, fat roast chickens, looking varnished, crusted scalloped potatoes, tomato aspic, potato salad, cucumber and beet salad, a rosy ham, muffins, baking powder biscuits, round bread, nut bread, banana-loaf fruitcake, light and dark layer cake, lemon meringue and apple and berry pies, bowls of preserved fruit, ten or twelve varieties