The opening of "That Evening Sun" emphasizes the differences between the past and the present, much like the opening section of "A Rose for Emily." Quentin is 24 years old, and laundry is now delivered in automobiles. There are electric line poles and paved streets; even the black women who still take in laundry have their husbands pick it up and deliver it in cars. But 15 years earlier, the streets would have been filled with black women carrying bundles of clothes balanced on their heads. Nancy was one of the women whom the Compson children liked to watch carry laundry on her head because she could balance her bundle while crawling through fences or walking down in ditches and then up out of them. Sometimes, the husbands of the washing women would fetch and deliver the clothes for their wives, but Jesus, Nancy's husband, would never stoop to this servitude for her.
The emphasis on washing both in the first and last sections unifies the story. The opening paragraphs describe the children's interest in Nancy as a washerwoman; the story ends with Quentin's accepting Nancy's death and wondering, "Who will do our washing now, Father?" Likewise, the opening emphasizes how Jesus is different from other husbands; at the end, he is likely outside Nancy's shack, waiting to kill her.
This first section provides much background information. When Dilsey, the Compsons' cook, is sick, Nancy has to cook for the family, and the children, always thinking that she is drunk, have to go to her cabin to wake her. However, when Nancy is arrested, the children come to believe that her problem isn't alcohol, but drugs. On the way to jail, Nancy passes Mr. Stovall, a deacon in the Baptist church, and she begins to plead with the white man: "When you going to pay me, white man? It's been three times now since you paid me a cent — " The Baptist deacon knocks her down and kicks out several of her teeth, and Nancy is taken to jail. There, she tries to hang herself by removing her dress and using it as a noose. The jailer reports that it is not whiskey that is the cause of Nancy's problems; rather, it is cocaine, because "no nigger would try to commit suicide unless he was full of cocaine, because a nigger full of cocaine wasn't a nigger any longer."
