"I’ll get the pitcher," Anna Beth said, trying to be useful.

"Here," the widow said. She picked up a glass and held it out.

Everybody froze. It was Jacob’s denture glass. When he drank beer at night, too worn to chew tobacco, he’d take his teeth out of his mouth and plop them in the jar, plant the heels of his dirty socks on the hearth and gaze into the fire.

The glass was as holy a relic as Jacob’s fishing pole and pocketknife. Far holier than a tractor. You don’t just go and insult a dead man by abusing his intimate worldly possessions. Roby chalked that one up to the widow’s distraught nature.

"I’ll get some fresh from the kitchen," Anna Beth said, taking the glass from her mother’s shaking hand.

"I’ll help you," Roby said, and followed her out of the room. Behind him, Buck was asking Alfred about the condition of the Massey Ferguson’s tires.

The congealed salad had a ghostlike tint, the peaches floating among the red Jello and whipped cream. Red was the proper choice of gelatin for a death. Someone knew the rules. Roby would have to check the formal book on the lectern to see who was responsible for that particular tribute. Such small tokens paved the way to healing far better than any minister’s words.

Anna Beth put the denture glass on top of the refrigerator. A film of paste and flecks of white settled to the bottom of the glass. Barnaby had taken the dentures with the corpse. The false teeth would be fitted into Jacob’s mouth so that he wouldn’t be slack-jawed at the viewing. If Barnaby attended to the details with the usual care, then Jacob would be haler and heartier than he’d looked in decades.

But the viewing wasn’t until tomorrow. There was still the sitting to get through.

Anna Beth was at the sink, rinsing out a chipped coffee mug, when the tears came. The first sign was the tremble of her shoulders, then her head dipped, and Roby saw her reflection in the window behind the sink. Her hair hung over her face, tangled strands on either side of the faucet. Roby went to her, patted her on the back just below the neck, rubbed softly.