"Late harvest was coming up," Alfred said. "Corn first. Daddy always looked at home up there in the seat of the Massey Ferguson, his hat pressed down to his ears."

"What about the tractor?" Marlene said. She had taken the chore of sorting things out, scheduling arrangements, seeing to the practical matters. "You going to sell it, Momma?"

The widow looked at the photograph on the television as if seeking advice. "Don’t hardly know yet."

Sarah, the middle sister, stood with a rustle of her patterned dress, a sleeveless rayon thing from off the rack at Rose’s Discount. It was a spring dress, really, not fit for early September, all light blue and yellow and pink. Roby felt sorrow for the family. In these parts, people couldn’t afford to go out and invest in an entire wardrobe of black just for a short period of use. They mourned in their best. How come their best was never good enough?

He supposed that maybe all that really mattered was how you felt inside your heart.

"Let’s not worry about that kind of thing," Sarah said. "It’s like grave-robbing, to start splitting up the goods before Daddy’s even in the ground."

Buck, her husband, nodded in agreement. Buck had twenty acres on the back side of Elk Knob, four of it cleared for crops. He could use a tractor. He’d been making do with a walk-behind tiller, the kind that fought you when the tines hit a rock.

Buck had asked Roby about the procedure for getting a tobacco allotment. All Roby knew about it was that the government was involved, told you how much to grow and how much not to grow, and the allotment could be passed on down as an inheritance. It was the same government that had sued the cigarette companies for millions. Damned if Roby wanted any piece of such nonsense, and had shared that opinion with Buck.

"Reckon the will spells all that out," Alfred said. "Who gets what, and all."