No matter how scarce the victuals, share, for you may be feeding angels unawares.

I yanked open the door, and a raggedy girl in a dirty gray bandanna turned to run away. I grabbed her skinny saplin arm, the color of dark clover honey, and held on.

“Whoa!” I said. “What you doin out here?” I wanted to look at my hand to see if any of her color had rubbed off on me, but I kept my hand tight on her and stared hard into her wide golden-brown eyes, near the same color as her skin.

The girl, who looked to be about my age, glanced over my shoulder and peered into the kitchen. She acted like the fox I freed from one of Pa’s leg traps last spring.

“Don’t be scairt of me,” I said. “Are you needin of somethin?”

“I’m hungry,” she said, twistin at a piece of her torn skirt. “Cain’t you spare me some pinders or cush?”

I looked past her and into the yard, where the chickens scratched at the bare ground. I couldn’t let no one see me with her or they’d accuse me of bein a Negra-lovin John Browner.

“Where you from?” I asked. I weren’t used to talkin to anyone her color out here. I tried to once when I was to the Janneys’ mill in Waterford, but Pa gave me the back of his hand and told me that I weren’t no better than “them.”

“My family is out pickin for one of your neighbors down the road. I’m lost. I watched you workin this mornin and hoped you’d help me.”

“Which family?” I asked, and wondered why she thought I’d help her. “Which family?” I asked again. We’re all poorer than ashes in these parts, and I didn’t know a one who could hire out their work.

“I cain’t mind their names,” she said as she studied at the ground, “but they live to the big white house with them tall posts. They traded for us to work in their fields.”

I might not have got away from our farm much, but I couldn’t remember ever seein such a house around here. I knowed that over Waterford way, where all the strange Quaker folk lived, the people my pa called slave lovers had houses bigger than ours, stone and brick where ours was split logs, but there wasn’t any big white houses with posts on their porches.

The girl never looked at me. She just stood there and rubbed her dirty bare foot back and forth along the silvery floorboards of the porch.

What did I have that I could share with her? She looked to be even hungrier than me. I remembered the dried-out piece of corn bread in my pocket. My stomach complained again, but I pulled the corn bread out and offered it to her.

She grabbed the bread and stuffed the whole piece into her wide mouth.

“You’re welcome,” I said smart-like, and then in a nicer way, “Don’t break your teeth. Sorry it’s so hard, but it’s about all I got here. Pa keeps a close watchin on our stores.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the last of the scrapple stuck fast to the sides of the skillet. Pa would beat me if he knowed I shared anythin with anyone, especially someone her color, but I couldn’t let her go away without feedin her somethin more.

“C’mon in,” I said, steppin outside to scoop up Mama’s quilt. It flapped and lifted in the light wind like a bird’s wing. “But if you hear my pa and brothers comin, you’ll have to hightail it out that side door by the fireplace. You don’t want to tangle with them.”

She stepped through the doorway and looked around the room as though she wanted to memorize every crock, bench, and pan. I wished that I’d cleaned up a bit afore she come, but I couldn’t hardly think of her as invited company.

“Not much here,” I said, “but start to scrapin the skillet, and I’ll try to find you somethin else.” I spread Mama’s quilt back onto my narrow bed, then patted the bench next to the table. The girl slid onto it and began to chip away at the burnt scrapple with a knife. Somehow she worked that knife around the skillet and watched every door and window. She reminded me of the white-faced owl in our barn. That big old moon-eyed bird seemed to spin its head nearly all the way round while it kept watch on me feedin the animals.

I could see that the girl were used to lookin out for herself, but she didn’t know what bad trouble we’d be in if Pa or one of my brothers come home and found her here. I’ve always kept an ear cocked for their sounds, but now I strained even more for both our sakes. She needed to be out the side door and runnin into the woods afore they got close to the cabin or the dogs got wind of her.

“What’s your name?” I asked, but afore she could answer, a sharp yippin cut through the quiet and the knife slipped from her hand and clanged to the floor. The girl stepped over the bench and headed for the side door, then stopped and turned back toward me. She reached out, grabbed my sleeve, then dropped it like it were an ember right out of the cookstove. She ran one way and then the other, the way a bobwhite does when a hawk passes over it.

Yip, yip, yip, whoooof, whooof, whooooo. The mixed sounds of dogs runnin a hot trail come from somewhere behind the cabin.

“I cain’t go out there,” she sobbed. “They’s too close. Them dogs smell me.” Her eyes shone with tears. She laid wide her hands. They looked like pink flowers openin to the sun.

Out on the front porch steps, I heard the clomp, clomp, clomp of boots. Then the familiar thump, thump, thump as Pa knocked mud off his boots afore comin inside.

Dogs on one side of the cabin, Pa on the porch. We was treed like coons. I bent over the bench by our kitchen table and whispered to her, “Help me move this so’s you can hide.”

We slid the bench backward. I stuck my fingers into two small holes in the floor and lifted the cellar trapdoor. Cold air and the smells of damp earth, potatoes, apples, and smoked meat filled the kitchen.

“Hurry, and don’t make no sound or we both be done for,” I warned.

The girl stepped through the hole, backed down the steps, and disappeared into the darkness. I slid the trapdoor back over the openin and threw a handful of sand acrost the floor to hide our scuffle marks. Afore I had time to move the bench into place, Pa crossed the porch and pushed through the door.