Yielding to sudden impulse, Uncle Cromer killed his wife late one afternoon while misty haze hung over the valley and mourning doves lamented the curtailment of the day. He justified this mercy killing to himself by the fact that she could never get well, that it would put an end to her intense suffering, that she was better off, that it would remove a burden from himself, his family and the community.

He did it with a big, fluffy, feather pillow pressed tightly over her face.

She knew. Her eyes burned defiantly at him. Her mouth curled in a sneer. Her tongue berated him. She struggled until the pillow smothered the last breath of air from her.

When Uncle Cromer first began applying the pillow, a noise outside temporarily distracted him. A wagon approached. Distinctly he could hear the crunch of iron-rimmed wheels over the gravel, the creak of harness leather, the plopping of horses' hooves on the firm earth, the rattling of the wagon bed. He listened as the wagon creaked to a stop near his front door.

"Maybe it's that blamed old hearse wagon you've been dreaming about, coming on to git you now," Uncle Cromer said, forcing the pillow into the woman's face with savage force.

Despite his strength, she freed her face enough to spit these venomous words at her husband: "If it's the hearse wagon, it will surely come back one day and get you, too."

Soon her struggling ceased and he removed the pillow from the dead woman's face. He smoothed the pillow, replaced it and straightened her rumpled hair and gown. Then he went to the door to see who had come.

But no one was there. No sign of any horse or wagon or person. As he looked, the wagon noise resumed as before, beginning within a few steps of his door, and continuing on out of hearing up the road toward the church. But he saw not a thing.

The mysterious wagon noise coupled with the imprint of his wife's last words began to trouble Uncle Cromer.

No one suspected anything unnatural about his wife's death. Women come and laid her out and men built a pine box coffin and dug a grave in the churchyard. Next afternoon, a real hearse wagon rattled away to the open grave exactly as the unseen one had done.

Uncle Cromer resumed some of his carefree roaming in the fields and woods. He farmed only enough to provide the necessities. Life was better now, but much less perfect than he imagined it would be. The sound of the ghostly hearse wagon and horse crunch into the yard, pause near the door, then resume and fade away toward the church.