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"Now Little Ida and I had prettyRa three Hail Marys and three Our Fathers and never failing to add for the deceased:

Let perpetual light shine upon them, O Lord,

and may their souls and the souls of all

the faithful departed rest in peace

"Then we'd chat about hoas a blessing Little Ida never knew real old age, or suffered illness, and that she was surely up there with God Same with Lynelle

"Finally, after all that, Big Ramona would ask if Goblin ith us, and then she said:

" 'Well, you tell Goblin it's time to sleep now,' and Goblin settled down beside ed with me, and off I went to sleep

"Gradually, over a period of severalRamona, and I was astonished to discover that Pops and the Shed Men, and even Jas Ra Raun incloser with the loss of Little Ida

"I took to going out fishing in the sith Pops, soot to like it out there as we poked our way through in the pirogue, and sometimes ent deep into the swaot a kind of fearless curiosity about the swaht find Manfred Blackwood's island, but that we did not do

"One afternoon, late, we cae old cypress tree that had a rusted chain around it, grown into it in parts, and a mark carved on it that looked to me to be an arrow It was an ancient tree, and the chain wason in the direction of the arrow, but Pops said no, it was late, and there was nothing out there anyway, and we et lost if ent any further

"It was all the same with me because I didn't entirely believe all the stories about Manfred and the Here, and I was sticky all over from the humid air, and so ent home

"Then Mardi Gras cao to her sister Ruthie's house, and this year she really didn't want to go She clai poorly, she had no appetite, not even for King cake, which was already arriving daily fro doith the flu

"But at last she decided to go into the city for all the parades, because Ruthie was depending on her and she didn't want the crowd of her elderly aunts and uncles and all her cousins to be disappointed that she wasn't there

"I didn't go with her, though she wanted h worsened (she called Pops every day and I usually spoke to her too), she did stay for the entire time

"On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and the very day she returned, she went to the doctor without anybody prodding her to do it Her cough was simply too bad