III

THE hail of early June shredded the growing blades of corn, and a windstorm breaking over Little Angus Creek in July flattened the sloping fields; but the hardy stalks rose in the hot sun, and the fat ears fruited and ripened. The mines at Blackjack had closed again and Father had rented a farm that spring on the hills rising from the mouth of Flaxpatch on Little Angus. We moved there during a March freeze, and the baby died that week of croup. When sap lifted in sassafras and sourwood, Father sprouted the bush-grown patches, and plowed deep with a mule Quin Adams lent him. With corn breaking through the furrows and the garden seeded, he left us to tend the crop, going over in Breathitt County to split rock in Mace Hogan’s quarry. There was good seasoning in the ground. Shucks bulged on heavy corn ears. Garden furrows were cracked where potatoes pushed the earth outward in their growing.

Weeds plagued the corn, and Mother took us to the fields. We were there at daylight, chopping horse-mint and crab grass with blunt hoes. Sister Euly could trash us all with a corn row. She was growing beanpole-tall, and thin and quick like Mother. Fletch had grown during the summer. His face was round as a butter ball. He dug too deep, often missing the weeds and cutting the corn. Mother let him take the short rows. He slept during hot afternoons at the field’s edge, deep in a patch of tansy with bees worrying dusty blossoms over his head.

“Hit’s a sight to have such a passel of victuals after living tight as a tow-wad,” Mother said. “If Saul Hig-night hadn’t laid claim to the heifer, we’d had milk and butter too. The baby might o’ lived.” Mother cried while telling about the heifer. “He heard the calf was alive and sent a man to fotch it. He was ashamed to come a-claiming himself.”

We raised thirty-six dommers. They scarcely pecked at the bran we threw out, for there was such a plenty of food in the fields and patches. You could holler “chickeroo” the day long and they wouldn’t come.

Tomatoes ripened faster than could be canned. The old apple trees in the bottom were burdened. We peeled and sulphured three bushels of Mclntoshes. Fall beans were strung and hung with peppers and onions on the porch. The cushaws were a wonder to see, bloated with yellow flesh. The crook-neck gourds on the lot fence grew too large for water dippers. They were just right to hang on martin poles.

“If we stay on here, I’m going to have me a mess o’ martins living in them gourds,” I told Mother.

“We’ll just settle down awhile if your poppy is a-mind to,” Mother said. “A sight the rations we’ve got.”

With the crops laid by, we cleared a patch of ground on the Point around the baby’s grave. Mother took up a bucket of white sand from the Flaxpatch sandbar, patting it on the mound with her hands. “We’re going to have a funeralizing for the baby in September,” she said. “Your poppy will be agin it, but we’re going to, whether or no. I’ve already spoke for Brother Sim Mobberly. He’s coming all the way from Troublesome Creek. I reckon we’ve got plenty to feed everybody.”

There was nothing more to do in the garden and fields, and during this first rest since spring Mother began to grieve over the baby. Euly told us that she cried in the night. We spoke quietly. There was no noise in the house. The bottle-flies on the windows and katydids outside sang above our speaking. With Mother suddenly on edge, and likely to cry at a word, we played all day on the hills. Euly ran about the coves like a young fox, coming in before supper with a poke of chestnuts and chinquapins. I found her playhouse once in a haw patch. Eight corncob poppets sat on rock chairs, eating giblets of cress from mud dishes. I skittered away, Euly never knowing I had been near.

Fletch followed me everywhere, forever wanting to go where I went. Sometimes I hid, choosing to play by myself, and talk things aloud, but he would call until his voice hoarsened and trembled. Then I was ashamed not to answer, and I’d pretend I had just come into hollering distance. He would run to me, dodging through the weeds like a puppy. There was no getting away from Fletch. We fished dirt holes for johnny-humpbacks. If I caught one first he spat down the hole for spite. Oft we would tale-tell. I told about Uncle Toll’s finger-piece, Walking John Gay, and the pigeon-birds; and of my going to Redbird River. “Tell agin you going to Redbird,” Fletch would say. So many times I had told I knew the words by heart. “Uncle Jolly brought me home the far way round,” I would begin. “First he went a-sparking Tina Sawyers on Left Troublesome, then we struck toward Redbird River country. I saw Cutshin and Goose Creek, Big Greasy and Hoss Neck. And Redbird was the biggest waters a-tall, clear as goblet-glass. I saw things Walking John Gay went many a mile to see. I saw country like a dream dreamt. . . .”

Oft we talked of growing up, of what we were going to do then. “When I’m growed to a man,” I’d brag, “I figger to be a horse doctor. Hain’t going to be a miner, buried down like a johnny-humpback.” Fletch thought he wanted to be a horse doctor too. “Me,” he would say, “I hain’t a-going to be a miner neither.”

One day Fletch and I came in from the buckeye thicket with our pockets loaded. Mother and Euly were working around a dead willow in the yard, stringing the twigless branches with saved eggshells. The eggs had been broken carefully at each end, letting the whites and yolks run out. The little tree was about five feet high, and the lean branches were already nearly covered with shells.

“I allus did want me an egg tree,” Mother said. “I hear tell it’s healthy to have one growing in the yard. And I figure it’ll be brightening to the house. A sight o’ folks will be coming to the funeralizing. My dommers ought to lay nigh enough to kiver the last branch before the time. Eggshells hain’t a grain o’ good except to prettify with.”

August lay heavy on the fields when Father came home for three days. Blooming whitetop covered the pasture before the house, and spindling stickweeds shook out purple bonnets. Father came just before dark, and the pretty-by-nights were open and peart by the doorsill. He trudged into the yard without seeing the egg tree, or the blossoms beside the steps. He walked up on the porch, and we saw his red nose and watery eyes. Mother caught him by the arm.

“Hit’s this plagued hay fever,” Father said. “Every bloom on the face o’ the earth is giving off dust. Sometimes it nigh chokes me black in the face.”

He sniffled, blew his nose, and went inside with Mother. His angry voice suddenly filled the house. Mother brought out an armload of yellowrods, stick-weed blooms, and farewell-summer Euly had stuck around in fruit jars.

Father’s face darkened when Mother told him about the funeralizing for the baby. “I’ve already sent on word to Brother Sim Mobberly,” she said.

Father groaned. “It’s onreckoning what a woman’ll think about with her man off trying to make a living,” he said. “Green hadn’t even larnt to walk. There hain’t any use for a big funeral.”

“We’ve got plenty to feed everybody,” Mother said. “I ain’t ashamed of what we got. We’ve done right proud this year. I’m just getting one preacher, and it’s going to be a one-day funeral.”

“There hain’t no use asking anybody except our kin,” Father said. “It’ll look like we’re trying to put on the dog.”

“Everybody that’s a-mind to come is asked,” Mother said. “I hain’t trying to put a peck measure over the word o’ God.”

Father got up and lighted the rio lamp. “We’ll feed right good down at Blackjack this winter,” he said. “I hear tell the mines are to open the middle of October—this time for good. I’m going back to Mace Hogan’s quarry for another two weeks and then I’m quitting. I’m longing to git me a pick and stick it in a coal vein. I can’t draw a clean breath of air outside a mine this time o’ year. It’s like a horse trying to breathe with his nose in a meal poke.”

“I was reckoning we’d stay on here another crap,” Mother said. “The mines is everly opening and closing. I been told there’s no school in Blackjack this fall. The baby is buried here. Oh, I never favored bringing up my children in a coal camp. They’ve got enough meanness in their blood without humoring it. We done right well crapping this year. We raised a passel of victuals.”

“Going to be good times agin in Blackjack,” Father said. “I hear they’re to pay nigh fifty cents a ton for coal loading. And they’re building some new company houses. I got my word in for one.”

Mother’s face was pale in the lamplight. “I reckon it’s my egg tree I’m hating to leave,” she said. “I allus did want me one.”

“Fresh news to me,” Father said. “I hain’t seen one since before I married and was traipsing round in Buck-horn Creek. I wisht all the timber was egg trees. They don’t give off a grain o’ dust. This Little Angus hollow is dusty as a pea threshing. It nigh makes a feller sneeze his lungs out.”

“I’m a-mind to stay on here,” Mother said, her voice chilled and tight. “It’s the nighest heaven I’ve been on this earth.”

Fall came in the almanac, and the sourwood bushes were like fire on the mountains. Leaves hung bright and jaundiced on the maples. Red foxes came down the hills, prowling outside our chicken house, and hens squalled in the night. Quin Adams’s hounds hunted the ridges, their bellies thin as saw blades. Their voices came bellowing in the dark hours. Once, waking suddenly, I heard a fox bark defeat somewhere in the cove beyond Flaxpatch.

Mother had set the funeralizing for the last Sunday in September. Father came on the Wednesday before, bringing a headstone split from Mace Hogan’s quarry. It was solid limerock. The baby’s name had been carved on one side with a chisel. We took it to the Point, standing it at the head of the mound. Father built an arbor there of split poplar logs. We thatched the roof with linn branches.

“It’s big enough for Brother Sim to swing his arms without hitting anybody,” Father said.

Mother climbed the hill to see it. “I wisht to God I’d had a picture tuck of the baby so it could be sot in the arbor during the meeting. I wisht to God I’d had it tuck.”

Father felled locusts, laying the trunks in front of the arbor for seats, and Mother took a pair of mule shears, cutting the weeds and grass evenly.

Uncle Jolly came Thursday morning. He came a-straddle a dwarf pony. His feet nearly dragged dirt. He came singing at the top of his voice:

Polish my boots

And set ’em on the bench,

Going down to Jellico

To see Rafe Shanks.

Holler-ding, baby, holler-ding.

Ol’ gray goose went to the river,

If’n I’d been a gander

I’d went thar with ’er.

Holler-ding, baby, holler-ding.

When he turned over the Little Angus sandbar, Uncle Jolly crossed his legs in the saddle, and came riding the yard path, right onto the porch, and would have gone pony and all into the house if Mother hadn’t been standing in the door. Father laughed, saying: “Jolly allus was a damned fool,” and Uncle Jolly got so tickled he reeled on the porch, holding his stomach, and fell into the pretty-by-night bed.

“Where’s Ma?” Mother inquired. “I wanted most for her to come.”

Uncle Jolly rose among the blossoms, playing like one leg was shorter than the other. “Ma’s puny,” he said. “Didn’t feel well enough to take the trip. Said for me to come on, and to tell you all she wasn’t going to live eternal and forever, and for all to come to see her. I got Elias Horn’s woman to stay with her till I get back. And I borrowed Elias’s pony-devil to ride.”

“I’ve been aiming to go,” Mother said. “I had in head going the first chance.”

Uncle Jolly looked toward the far end of the yard. “By juckers,” he said. “First tree ever I saw lay eggs.”

Aunt Rilla and Uncle Luce came in time for dinner, walking the creek bed road with Lala, Crilla, Tishy, and Lue strung out behind. Aunt Rilla carried Foan, the youngest, in her arms. Nezzie Crouch came walking alone from Blackjack, tired from the eleven-mile journey. Uncle Toll and Aunt Sue Ella were there by daylight next morning, and we all set to work getting ready for Sunday. The floors were scrubbed twice over with a shuck mop, and the smoky walls washed down. Jimson-weeds were cut in the backyard; the woodpile was straightened. Mother cut the heads off of fifteen dommers and our last guinea. The stove stayed hot all day Friday, baking and frying. Cushaw pies covered the kitchen table.

“I reckon you’ve got enough shucky beans biled to feed creation,” Nezzie Crouch said. “Alpha, you hain’t never been in such a good fix. You’d be puore foolish moving to Blackjack agin. Hit’s been a hard scrabble there.”

“Since I married I’ve been driv from one coal camp to another,” Mother said, taking her hands out of bread dough. “I’ve lived hard as nails. I’ve lived at Blue Diamond. I’ve lived at Chavies, Tribbey, Butterfly Two, Elkhorn, and Lackey. We moved to Hardburly twice, and to Blackjack beyond counting. I reckon I’ve lived everywhere on God’s green earth. Now I want to set me down and rest. The baby is buried here, and I’ve earnt a breathing spell. We done right well this crap. We got plenty.”

Aunt Sue Ella kept us children shooed out of the kitchen. We hung around Uncle Jolly until he put a lizard up Fletch’s breeches leg, and threw a bucket of water on the rest of us. “Sometimes I fair think Jolly is a witty,” Aunt Rilla said.

Father met Preacher Sim Mobberly at the mouth of Flaxpatch Saturday morning, taking Elias Horn’s nag for him to ride. But they both came back walking, being ashamed to straddle the sorry mount. Father said he didn’t know the pony had a saddle boil until he had started with her.

Preacher Sim slept on the feather bed that night. Father took the men out to the barn to sleep on the hay. Aunt Rilla and Aunt Sue Ella took Mother’s bed, the rest of us sleeping on pallets spread upon the floor.

The moon was full, and big and shiny as a brass pot. It was daywhite outside. I couldn’t sleep, feeling the strangeness of so many people in the house, and the unfamiliar breathing. Before day I went to the corn-crib and got a nap until the rooster crowed, not minding the mice rustling the shucks in the feed basket.

Mother climbed to the Point before breakfast to spread a white sheet over the baby’s grave. When she came down the Adamses were there, Quin looking pale with his first shave of the fall, and Mrs. Adams flushed and hot, not wanting to sit down and wrinkle her starched dress. Cleve Cockerel and his family were not far behind. The Gearhards, the Letchers, the Oot-ens came; folk were there from Dans Fork, Hurricane Branch, Rowdy, Old Trace, Pushback Hollow, Saw Pit.

Before nine o’clock the yard and porch were crowded. Neighbors came quietly, greeting Mother, and the women held handkerchiefs in their hands, crying a little. Then we knew again that there had been death in our house. All who went inside spoke in whispers, their voices having more words than sound. The clock was stopped, its hands pointing to the hour and minute the baby died; and those who passed through the room knew the bed, for it was spread with a white counterpane and a bundle of fall roses rested upon it.

At ten o’clock Preacher Sim opened his Bible in the arbor on the Point. “Oh, my good brethren,” he said, stroking his white beard, “we was borned in sin, and saved by grace.” He spat upon the ground, and lifted his hands toward the withered linn thatching. “We have come together to ask the blessed Saviour one thing pine-blank. Can a little child enter the Kingdom of Heaven?”

The leaves came down. October’s frost stiffened the brittle grass, and spiders’ webs were threads of ice in the morning sun. We gathered corn during the cool days, sledding it down the snaky trail to the barn. Pigs came out of the hills from mast hunting and rooted up bare potato rows with damp snouts. Father went to Blackjack and stayed a week. When he returned there was coal dust ground into the flesh of his hands. He had worked four days in the mines.

“I promised to get moved in three days,” Father said. “We got a new house waiting, with two windows in every room.”

“I’m a-longing to stay on here,” Mother said. Her voice was small and hoping. “I’ll be staying with the children, and you can go along till spring. Moving hain’t nothing but leaving things behind.”

Father cracked his shoes together in anger. “That’s clear foolishness you’re speaking,” he said, reddening. “I hain’t aiming to be a widow-man this year.”

“I’m sot agin moving,” Mother said, “but I reckon I’m bound to. If we could stop by Lean Neck and see Ma though, I’d take more satisfaction going.”

“We ought to be moving by Thursday,” Father said. “No sense dragging our stuff eighteen miles out o’ the way. Come spring, you can go see your ma.”

“Nigh we get our roots planted, we keep pulling them up and planting in furrin ground,” Mother complained. “Moving is an abomination. Thar’s a sight of things I hate to leave here. I hate to leave my egg tree I set so much time and patience on. Reckon it’s my egg tree holding me.”

“I never heered tell o’ such foolishness,” Father said. “Pity thar hain’t a seed so it can be planted agin.”

Cold rains came over the Angus hills, softening the roads and deepening wheel tracks. There could be no moving for a spell, though Father was anxious to be loading the wagon. Mother sat before the fire, making no effort to pack, while rain fell through the long, slow days.

“Rain hain’t never lost a day for a miner,” Father said, walking the floor restlessly.

“You ought to be nailing together a little covering for the baby’s grave then,” Mother said. Father fetched walnut planks from the loft and built a gravehouse under the barn shed. It was five feet square with a chestnut shingle roof. During the first lull in the weather, we took it to the Point.

When the rain stopped, fog hung in the coves, and the hills were dark and weather-gray. Cornstalks stood awkwardly unbalanced in the fields. The trees looked sodden and dead, and taller than when in leaf. Father took our stove down one night. The next morning the mule was hitched to the wagon, and the hind gate lowered before the back door. Mother gave us a cold baked potato for breakfast, then began to pack the dishes. We were on Flaxpatch road by eight o’clock, Mother sitting on the jolt-seat beside Father, and looking back toward the Point where the gravehouse stood among bare locusts.

We reached Blackjack in middle afternoon. The slag pile towering over the camp burned with an acre of oily flames. A sooty mist hung over the creek bottom. Our house sat close against a bare hill. It was cold and gloomy, smelling sourly of paint, but there were glass windows, and Euly, Fletch, and I ran into every room to look out.

A pied cat came to smell the meat box. Old neighbors dropped in to shake our hands and to stare at the dried, pickled, and canned victuals we had brought; and then went away. Nezzie Crouch stayed to help. She tried to scare the pied cat, but he would not be frightened. “Jist a gypsy cat,” she said, “bad to take up with newcomers. Folks call him OP Bartow.”

Father started back after the last load as soon as the wagon was empty, leaving us to set the beds. He came back in the dark of the morning, none of us hearing him enter the gate.

We were awake at daybreak, feeling the nakedness of living in a house with many windows. We went on the porch and looked up the rutted road. Men walked the mud with carbide lamps burning on their caps. Mother came out presently and we went into the yard with her. There was the egg tree. Its roots were buried shallowly in damp earth near the fence corner. Some of the shells were cracked, and others had fallen off, exposing brown willow branches. Mother turned and went back into the house. “It takes a man-person to be a puore fool/’ she said.

IT was middle afternoon. Euly and I ran along the road to see the town, and to look into the creek beyond. We stole away from Fletch. I had in head seeing the two blind mules Father had told me the foreman kept at his place. We looked at the rows of houses in the valley bottom. Eight houses were high on the hill. At the far end of the camp rooms hung over creek waters, sitting on posts. Our homeseat was near the burning slag pile, low in a nest of houses. The camp was alive with the groan of the coal conveyor. It rang through the town like a rusty bell.

“I used to know who lived in every house,” Euly said, “but a pack of strangers have moved in. I hardly know a body.”

“Recollect the feller who grabbled a mole in our garden?” I asked. “Sid Pindler, his name was. Ab Stev-all and Fruit Corbitt come with him. If ‘n I met air one, I’d know ‘em.”

“Fruit is the storekeeper,” Euly said. “Once I went to buy a box o’ pepper and he dropped a piece of hore-hound candy in the poke.”

We walked a wheel-rut, deep as the mouths of our shoes. Women passed, coming from the storehouse with brown pokes resting on their arms. A smell of salt meat and water-ground meal hung after them.

“I hear they’s a fortune-telling woman lives in this camp,” Euly said. “I’d give anything to have my fortune told.”

“An herb doc lives here,” I reminded. “Recollect Nezzie Crouch said so. Wonder if they’s a granny woman?”

“We’re going to buy buttermilk from Nezzie Crouch,” Euly bragged, “and I’m going to fotch it every day.”

A man came down the road carrying a small rooster. He held the fowl’s legs firmly between forefinger and thumb, a hand resting on its back. The rooster was fairly hidden in his arm-crotch. We looked after him. “Where, now, can he be a-going with that banty?” I asked. Euly shook her head, not knowing. “He might be a furriner,” she said. “He’s not got our look-like. I bet he was born afar yonder in West Virginia.”

We stopped, listening. Doors opened and shut, knobs rattled. Thumb-latches clicked. Feet trod the floors. Children came into the road to toss stocking balls, pitching them back and forth. A ball was missed, rolling at my feet. I picked it up, bending my arm to throw. The boy waited, not lifting his hands for the catch, watching me. I threw it back. He let the ball strike the ground, roll, and die. He caught it up and went into the house without looking back. A face was pressed against a smoky window, and withdrawn.

A man came walking, his corduroy breeches rustling. He wore three shirts, one atop another, and there were three collars leafed about his neck. A ball was tossed to him and he bounced it on the ground, skipping like a boy. The children laughed. They grabbed at his coat pockets, reaching into them, pulling. They drew forth bits of string and bright paper, and shiny tobacco tags. His pockets were turned wrongside out and the children scrambled upon the ground for the falling pretties. A baby-child toddled between the man’s spread legs, screaming with joy. The man hopped on one foot, spun on a heel, and laughed.

“He’s Jace Haggin,” Euly said, cupping her words into a whisper. “OF Reece Haggin’s son. I saw him when we lived in Blackjack last time. He’s a man not growed up in his mind.”

“He’s got three shirts on,” I said. “I bet he’s rich.”

“Now, no,” Euly said. “He’s a born witty, and don’t know better than to carry all his clothes on his back.”

“Hit’s a pity-sake,” I said.

Jace Haggin came up to us. He stood gentle as a shep dog. He held out three hand-made tops. “Want to play spinny?” he asked. “Want to?”

“We’re going to spy in the creek and see if they’s fish,” Euly answered.

“I was going to see the foreman’s blind mules if’n I found out where he lived,” I said.

Euly frowned, for I had not told her about the mules.

Jace put the tops into his pocket. We watched him, restless to be going, treading the ground with our feet. We were a bit afraid.

“Darb Sorrels lives a full mile upcreek,” Jace said.

We began to move, heads over shoulders. We ran. We ran all the way to the creek.

“I saw a strange feller once,” I said, looking into the water. “Hit was on Lean Neck, and a little bull of a man come along, and him not got a hair on topside of his head. ‘Be dom,’ he kept a-saying.”

The waters ran yellow, draining acid from the mines, cankering rocks in its bed. The rocks were snuffy brown, eaten and crumbly. There were no fishes swimming the eddies, nor striders looking at themselves in the waterglass. Bare willows leaned over. They threw a golden shadow on the water.

“Going to see them mules was a lie-tale,” Euly said spitefully.

“Hope me to die,” I swore. “Hit’s truth. I’d go straight if I knew the way.” I looked into the water and thought of myself riding a little mule, my feet swinging in the stirrups. A mule my very own. How proudly I rode in my mind; Father, Mother, and Euly watching, and Fletch stubbed with envy. “Come the chance, I’m going to ride one o’ them mules,” I said. I grew bold. I spoke out. “I hain’t going to be a miner when I grow to a man, a-breathing bug-dust inside a hill. I aim to be a horse doctor. I am, now.”

Suddenly the metal groan of the coal conveyor stopped. The camp was hollow with quiet. Then we heard a shout, a man’s halloo. It came from the drift-mouth. Feet began to thump the paths curling into the road. Empty dinner buckets rattled. Doors swung wide and women and children came out on the porches. The smell of frying meat came with them.

“It’s men coming from the mines,” Euly said.

Miners tramped the road, walking four abreast. They came with lamps burning, their heads bobbing, and with faces smudged.

We leapt forward. We raced toward our house, wanting to get home before Father arrived. Euly held back, letting me keep up, for she was swifter. We went into our house through the back door, and there was Uncle Samp come to stay a spell with us.

“A FAIR place you’ve got here,” Uncle Samp said. He sat in the kitchen after supper, under the white bloom of the rio lamps, his chair leaned against the wall. His eyes rounded, looking. Three fly-bugs walked stupidly across the ceiling, wings tight against their bodies, drunk with light. Euly peered through the window into the dark. Fletch crawled around the table, pushing a match box, playing it was a coal gon. Old Bartow followed Fletch, snatching playfully at his breeches legs. “Never you lived in such a bran-fired new house as I’ve got reckoning of,” Uncle Samp said. “Aye, gonnies, if there hain’t windows looking four directions.” He tipped the blunt end of his mustache with a thumb. It was a knuckle-joint long now, combed stiff and thin, the hairs as coarse as a boar’s whiskers.

“Camp houses setting on three sides and hills blacking the other,” Mother said. “Can’t see a thing beyond.” Her words were dolesome, though not complaining. She glanced at Uncle Samp as she dried the dishpan, and Father looked too from where he sat beside the stove. A thready web of veins was bright on Uncle Samp’s cheeks. His hands rested on his knees, fat and tender, and they had none of the leathery look of a miner’s. I remembered then what Mother had said to Father before supper, whispering in the kitchen while Uncle Samp napped in the far room.

“Fifty years old if he’s a day,” she had said, “and never done a day’s work. A man of his years ought to be married, keeping his own. A shame he’ll put up on his kin when there’s work a-plenty, not lifting a hand. I allus wanted to bring up my chaps honest, never taking a thing unbelonging to them, never taking a grain they don’t earn. It’s folks forever setting bad examples that turns a child wrong.”

Father had frowned. “If Samp ever got started digging—” he began, and then turned away, saying no more.

Fletch was listening behind the stove. “Now, I never tuck a thing unbelonging,” he had said.

Father reached into the wood box for a soft splinter to whittle. Thin slivers curled under the blade of his knife until he held a yellow stalk bright with wooden leaves.

Fletch came from under the table to claim the splinter, taking it back for his play. We heard him blowing, shaking the leaves with the wind of his breath.

Father snapped the blade into its case. “Hit’s a sight how good the mining business is getting,” he said. “Big need for bunker coal up at the lakes, afar yonder. Jobs laying around loose for them with the notion to work.”

Uncle Samp looked frightened. The veins on his cheeks burned full and red.

“Samp, if you want me to speak to Darb Sorrels, I will,” Father said. “He’s foreman at Number Two, and the best man to work for I ever had. I was raised up with Darb, and figure he’ll take on any of my kin if I just say the word.”

“I seed Darb Sorrels this morning,” Fletch said under the table. “He’s the biggest man ever was.”

“I saw Jace Haggin,” I said. “He’s a witty, and wears three shirts.”

Uncle Samp settled the front legs of his chair on the floor. He hooked his thumbs together, pulling one knuckle against the other. A muffled cough came out of his throat. He grunted. “I hain’t been well lately,” he said. “A horn o’ Indian Doctor tonic I’m taking after every meal.”

“I got Harl and Tibb Logan put on today,” Father said. He weighed his words as he spoke. Mother glanced swiftly at him. Her mouth opened in dismay, for she knew suddenly that Father’s cousins would come to live at our house again, making us fretful with their dark and stubborn ways.

“They were setting in wait for me at the driftmouth this morning,” Father went on. “I spoke to Darb Sorrels for them. I said: ‘Darb, here’s some o’ my kin. I’d take it as a favor if you’d give them a little mite o’ something to do.’ And by grabbies if he didn’t put them to snagging jackrock.”

Fletch raised his head above the table, holding the shagged splinter aloft, and looking at Uncle Samp. “Recollect the time Harl and Tibb cut yore mustache strings off?” he asked.

Uncle Samp’s face reddened. He tipped his mustache ends and sat up angrily. “I thought them two were holed up at Mothercoal Mine for the winter,” he grumbled. “I heered somebody say it.”

“Mothercoal is just a one-horse mine,” Father said. “Allus a-hiring and a-firing.” Then his voice dropped, holding the words low in the small of his throat. He looked guiltily at Mother. “I reckon they’ll be boarding here with us. Might be along hunting a bed tonight.”

Mother’s eyes hollowed. Her hands grew limp about the dishrag. I tried to remember Harl and Tibb. I thought of our four rooms, square and large, believing them enough for us all, and I could not think why Mother would want us to live lonesome and apart. I thought of Harl and Tibb and Father sitting before the fire on winter evenings, legs angled back from the blaze, speaking after the way of miners. They would brag a little, drawing back the corners of their mouths. “I loaded fourteen tons today if I shoveled one chunk.” “I heered a little creak-creak, and by grabbies if a rock size of a washpot didn’t come down afront o’ me. Hit scared my gizzard, I tell you.” “I set me a charge o’ powder, lit the fuse too short, and got knocked flat as a tape.” And Uncle Samp would speak from where he sat behind them, scornful of the mines, telling of what he had heard at the storehouse, and the others would listen as though a child had spoken.

Mother’s lips began to tremble. She hung the dish-rag on a peg and went hurriedly out of the room, her clothes rustling above the fry of the lamp wick. Father leaned forward in his chair, and then strode through the door, following Mother.

Euly turned from the window, where her hands had been cupped against the light. “I just saw a woman pass along, a-walking by herself,” she said. “She might be the fortune-teller going somewheres in the night.”

Uncle Samp’s eyes lighted up. They opened round and wide. “Has she gone beyond sight?” he asked.

“Gone off down the road,” Euly said.

“Coonie Todd, it might o’ been,” Uncle Samp said. “She’s a widow woman, fair as a picture-piece. She goes a-traipsing all hours, selling broadsides with verses writ on them.”

“What do them verses say?” I asked.

“They’re writ about her man getting killed in the mines/’ Uncle Samp said. “I forget how the lines run, but they’ve got rhymy words on the ends. Hit’s music not set to notes.”

“Wisht I had me a broadside,” I said.

“For any piece o’ money,” Uncle Samp said, “be it a penny or greenback, Coonie Todd’ll shuck off one of them broadsides from a little deck she’s got.”

Euly turned from the window, blinking at the light. “If I had some money, I’d get my fortune told,” she said, “a-knowing who I’ll marry, dark or fair, and who’ll be coming to my wedding.”

“I know where they’s a mess o’ pennies,” Fletch said, “but you’d better not touch ‘em.” He held the shaggy splinters high, pointing toward the mantelpiece in the front room. We recalled the four pennies he had found once. They were stacked inside the clock, behind the pendulum. “Was somebody to die, them’s the pennies to put on their eyes,” Fletch said.

Uncle Samp laughed, the web of veins ripening on his face. “Never takes more’n two,” he said. “Two eyes, two pennies.”

“Hush,” Euly said, listening. We pricked our ears, hearing only the lamp wick’s clucking for a moment. Then brogans shuffled outside, came nearer, and stopped. There was no sound of feet on the doorsteps. We waited, knowing it was Harl and Tibb, wondering how they moved so quietly. Suddenly Euly sprang back from the window, her face paling, fright catching in her throat. Fletch dropped the splinter, breaking off the shags. Uncle Samp jumped too, being as scared as the rest of us. Old Bartow skittered under the table. Two faces were pressed against the glass. Eyes looked in through a fog of breath; noses were tight against the pane, looking like wads of dough.

“Them two are born devils,” Uncle Samp said.

I SAT with Father and Kell Haddix in the front room. A chunk of fire burned in the grate. Uncle Samp had gone to the storehouse. Mother was puny and lay on a bed in the far room. Euly and Fletch played quietly in the kitchen, it being too early for their sleeping time. We could hear bare feet whispering on the floor. They played frog-in-the-middle, making out there were a full dozen in the ring.

Kell Haddix’s chin rose turtlewise out of his collar. His Adam’s apple quivered; it strained in his neck. I looked, and it was like a granny hatchet’s throat, swallowing clots of air. He lifted his arms, speaking. “They lit the Willardsborough smelter with a hundred dollar bill. A gold certificate. Aye, God, brother, I saw it burn.” A pale wash of blue darkened in his eyes.

Father kicked at a finger of jackrock hanging from the grate basket. “Thirty years ago that was,” he said, discounting. “The smelter’s been falling a ruin twenty-five years nigh. No profit to dig ore in these hills. They lost money by the bushel measure.”

A grim smile tightened Kelt’s lips. “That’s what I’m talking. Money to burn. Hit’s the same company owns this mine. They never missed that goldback out o’ their left hind pocket. Money to burn, brother, and they’re starting Monday to cut one day’s work off a week. This time o’ year the mining business ought to be juning.”

“When I moved to Blackjack, I figured to work regular. But I’ve lived barebones long enough not to worry when my pay is cut down a grain.”

Kell ran hands through his hair, scratching. His eyes burned in their sockets. “Got me worried. I’ve seen this thing happen here before. One day’s work cut off, then two, three, four. The mines closed. Storehouse shelves bare, and no credit for victuals. The operators never stuck their faces in this hollow for eight months. I lived on here. You can’t pack twelve children about like fodder. Twelve hungry chaps in my house and where the next poke o’ soup beans was coming from unbeknownst. Folks moved away, God knows where. Whether they got work, I never heered. Fourteen families stayed, and there were times when all the meal barrels together couldn’t o’ furnished dustings enough for one pone o’ bread. Twelve shikepokes in my house. Brother, that’ll make a feller reckon.”

“They tuck new men on here last week. Three o’ my kin. I just says to Darb Sorrels: ‘Looky here, Darb—’”

“Hit don’t make sense, this cutting down and taking on. Begod! They ought to hire Jace Haggin to do their business. A born witty could do well as been done. Oh, I want none o’ my boys grubbing coal for a living. I’d ruther they’d starve in fresh air.”

“Hain’t nothing wrong with hard work, if they’s enough of it.”

Kell glanced at me, staring hard. “What, now, air you going to do with this scantling of a feller?” he asked. “Air you content to have him be slave to a pick?”

Father’s gaze was steady upon the ceiling. “Why, I might make a check-weigh-man out of him.”

I reached for the poker, stirring the fire. “I’m aiming to be a horse doctor,” I said. “I am.”

Father grinned.

“No bangtails in this valley,” Kell said, “less you count the two blind mules Darb Sorrels has. Mine company used to pay their keep. Now Darb has to fork in his own pocket for their feed. Old now and ought to be put out o’ misery. No more need for mules since they put wires in the mines.”

“I’m aiming to cure all manner of beings, aside folks,” I said.

“Oyez, oyez,” Kell said. He drew his legs together. The bony knots of his knees were tight in the leg-bags of his breeches. He stood to go. “I’ll kill my young ’uns off before I’ll let them crawl inside a mine hole,” he vowed. “‘Pon my word and honor.” He moved toward the door, then paused. His shoulders sagged, his face became limp and resigned. “Oh, they’ll be miners, I reckon. My chaps and yours’ll be miners. Brought up in the camps they got no chance. No chance earthy.” He opened the door, closing it softly behind him.

Mother heard Kell go and came into the room in a nightgown, my red coat about her shoulders. She sat close against the fire.

“Kell Haddix’s a little touched,” Father said. He tapped his head. “Up here.”

“I hain’t going to be a miner,” I said. “I pine-blank hain’t now.”

Mother raised her eyes toward me in wonder.

“Darb Sorrels’s a dog, if there ever was one,” Harl said.

Harl and Tibb stood on the porch with Father, kicking heels of mud from their boots, scraping dirt crumbs from hob toes. It was Saturday, late in November, and they had come home from the mines with silver rattling in their pockets. I heard their feet grinding the floor and I came out from under the porch where I had been hunting rat holes.

“Darb allus has been square with me,” Father said, rolling his dynamite-cap pouch into a ball. “Little troubles are bounden to happen.” He bent down, carving the mud away with the long blade of his knife.

“He’s set us digging a vein not thick as a flitter/’ Tibb said, his mouth full of scorn. “Hit’s eighty feet off the main tunnel, mixed with jackrock, and a feller’s got to break his back to wedge in.”

“Can’t make brass, a-digging the vein,” Harl said. “For a pretty I’d set a fuse and blow that trap.”

“Stick and dig,” Father said. “You’re the last fellers tuck on, and they’re already talking about cutting to a three-day week. Darb can’t give a pick and choose. I say dig that coal, and don’t start pulling any rusties.” He shucked his boots off, taking them under his arm, and went inside in his socks.

I climbed the steps. Harl was shaking his feet like a cat come in out of the dew, his thin lips speaking against Darb Sorrels.

“I’ll wash your boots for a penny,” I said, “and shine them till they’ll be nigh like a looking glass.”

They cocked their heads, their eyes dark as chinquapins under the bills of mine caps. “What would you buy with such a bag o’ money?” Tibb asked. They laughed, shaking their pockets, jingling their pay.

“I’d buy me a broadside off the peddle woman,” I said. “I would, now.”

Tibb reached up and caught hold of the porch joist. He was that tall. A grin wrinkled his mouth. “They dropped no pennies in my pay pocket,” he said. “Get Samp to beg you a broadside. He hangs around that Todd woman every chance. This morning I saw him standing in the road middle talking to her, standing there with his brogans hitched with yarn strings.”

Harl struck his hands together, laughing. “I nigh broke my neck stumbling over Samp’s boots last night,” he said. “I tuck me a blade and eased it through the eel-strings. They cut like butter.”

“You oughten to do it,” I said, feeling sorry for Uncle Samp. “Hit’s not honest.”

“I’d give a pretty to stick him and Darb Sorrels in that mine alley and set off a keg o’ powder this side,” Tibb said. “By grabs, I would.”

They scrubbed their boots on the porch a bit more, clapped the carbide flame on their cap lamps, and went inside. The floor was dark where they stepped, marking their way over the scoured planking.

I pulled off my shoes as Father had done, tipping into the house. I set them on the front room hearth and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Fat smells of soup beans drifted from the kitchen, hanging among the beds. I stood on my toes, reaching into the clock, feeling behind the pendulum for the pennies kept there. I pulled them out, cupping them in my hand. There were four, worn and blackened, having no faces to speak of. “If’n I had me a penny—” I said aloud; and then I suddenly put them back, spying about to see no one was looking. I took my shoes and went into the kitchen. Father was warming by the stove. I stood behind his chair and looked over his shoulder, but I couldn’t raise the courage to ask for a penny piece.

Harl and Tibb were already at the table. “The beans aren’t nigh done yet,” Mother warned, but they would not wait. They filled their plates from the boiling pot, whispering together as they ate. We heard Darb Sor-rels’s name spoken. Little wrinkles of anger dented their foreheads. Uncle Samp glanced up from the corner where he was making a hickory whistle for Fletch, a grain of uneasiness in his eyes.

Fletch heard too. He came and stood between Harl and Tibb, not being the least afraid. “I seed Darb Sorrels one time,” he said. “I reckon he’s the biggest man ever was.”

Father chuckled in the deep of his throat. “The biggest man ever was come from Lower Mill Creek,” he said, recollecting. “Died more’n thirty years ago, and he tuck a nine-foot coffin. Bates his name was, kin to the Bateses on Troublesome Creek. Baby Bates he was called. Stood seven feet six in his stocking feet.”

Uncle Samp leaned against the wall. He was cutting a blow notch in the hickory whistle. “Abraham Lincoln was a big man,” he said, “biggest feller I ever saw.”

“You never saw Abe Lincoln,” Father said.

“I never saw him in the flesh for truth,” Uncle Samp said, “but I saw a statue o’ him in Louisville once. It stood nine foot, if it stood air inch, and his head was big as a peck measure. Oh, he had a basket of a head to carry his brains in.”

“That was just a statue, a-made big and stretched out,” Father explained. “The man who hacked that rock picture carved him standing out on purpose.”

Harl and Tibb held spoons in their fists, listening to Father and forgetting to eat. Father never batted an eye telling this tale. It was the bound truth.

“This Baby Bates, he wasn’t just strung out tall,” Father went on. “He was big according, head to toe. Three hundred and five he weighed, and not a grain o’ fat he had. I saw him pick up Podock Jones once, rocking him in his arms like a baby. I like to died laughing, seeing OP Podock’s beard waving up and down, and him looking like a born dwarf.”

“By grabbles,” Uncle Samp said, “I’m kin to the Bateses on Troublesome.”

Harl’s spoon clattered on his plate. “How much kin air you to that queen bee who peddles ballad verses?” he asked. The black beads of his eyes were on Uncle Samp. “I see you two forever swapping talk.”

Mother opened the stove door and took out the corn bread. She shook the pan to see if the pones were stuck. “I hear Coonie Todd’s a good woman, and sets honor by her dead husband,” she said. “Got a homeseat her pure own. That’s more’n most folks can brag about.”

“Her man’s been dead three years,” Harl said. “Three years buried and she hain’t married another.” He looked slyly at Uncle Samp. “I don’t figure she’ll be taking up with jist any ol’ drone.”

Uncle Samp knicked at the whistle. The vein patches were bright on his cheeks.

“That woman’s the best song scribe ever was,” I said. “Makes verses right out of her head.”

“Reckon she’d make a rhyme about Darb Sorrels if something went bad wrong with him?” Tibb asked, stretching his neck to swallow.

“Now, looky here,” Father warned. “Darb Sorrels could break a common man down like he was a shotgun. I’m agin starting trouble.”

“I wouldn’t be scared to tip him,” Tibb said.

“Darb’s been fair with me. Anything he’d name, I’d stand by.”

“Feller can’t make shoe leather digging that sorry bone vein. Had my way, the roof o’ that tunnel would be setting agin the ground.”

Tibb looked suddenly at Harl. He spoke: “If that tunnel was closed—” then bit his words off. They whispered together again. They pushed their plates back and left the house.

Before the beans were fully done, I tiptoed into the front room and felt inside the clock. I took the rustiest penny—so black it looked like a button. “I’ll put one back in its place the first chance,” I thought. “I’m just a-borrowing.” When I slipped it into Uncle Samp’s hand he spied hard, at first not knowing what it was. I whispered in his ear, and he grinned. ‘Til be seeing her tonight,” he said. “I’ll buy you a broadside for shore.”

We sat down to eat. Our plates were filled with beans from the pot, the goblets poured full of buttermilk, the bread broken and crumbled. Fletch slipped crusts under the table for Old Bartow. Uncle Samp ate hurriedly, and set off on the dark road. We were alone in the house. There was none of Tibb’s and Harl’s tromping in muddy boots, or Uncle Samp’s groans after a heavy meal.

“It’s good to have a little peace,” Mother said. “Hit’s like Promised Land.” The dread went out of her face. She glanced around the table. “You’ve every one got buttermilk mustaches,” she said, laughing quietly. We wiped them off with the backs of our hands, and then we played a riddle game.

Euly had first go.

As I went over London Bridge

I met my sister Ann,

I broke her neck and drank her blood

And let her body stand.

“That hain’t the way I heered it,” I said.

As I went through the guttery-gap

I met my Uncle Davy,

I cracked his skull and drank his blood

And left his body aisy.

Fletch was anxious for his riddle, fearing we would know the answer.

First green and then yaller,

All guts and no tallow.

Euly and I smiled, knowing what this thing was, but we guessed wild.

“A parrot-bird?”

“A corncob?”

“Johnny-humpback?”

“Now, no,” Fletch said.

Fletch got down from the table and crawled about, blowing the whistle Uncle Samp had made for him. “I’m an engine pulling sixteen coal gons,” he said. While Mother washed the dishes we played crackaloo, pitching beans at a floor seam. Mother lifted her hands out of the dishpan. They hung like dripping leaves. Her face became grave, her eyes dulled. “Pity it can’t be like this every night of the world,” she said. “Living apart, having our own.”

Father became thoughtful, cracking his knuckles one by one. “I wonder what sort o’ rusty Harl and Tibb are up to?” he said.

Mother wakened me in the black of the morning, standing over the bed with a lamp. I saw the fright in her eyes, and her trembling hands. The glass chimney shook inside its ring of brass thumbs. She told what had happened to Harl and Tibb—the little she knew, all not yet being known.

“Living or dead, there’s no telling,” Mother said. I jumped out of bed, and into my breeches. I jumped out thinking of Uncle Samp and the pennies. “Two eyes, two pennies,” he had said, and now both Harl and Tibb might be stretched cold, and there would be nothing to hold their eyelids down. I was good and scared.

Uncle Samp’s bed was empty, the covers thrown back from the trough his heavy body made in the mattress. He and Father had hurried to the mine when the word first came. Harl and Tibb’s bed hadn’t been slept in, and I thought how they had been buried all these hours, deep underside the earth, with nobody knowing whether they still drew breath. A chill fiercer than the cold of the room crept under my shirt.

Drawing on my red coat, I went barefoot into the yard. The road was alive with folk shaken out of Sunday morning’s sleep, trudging over frosty ruts toward the mines. Daylight grew on the ridge. A smoky coldness hung in the camp. Men had their hands almost to elbows in breeches pockets; women clasped fingers into balls against their breasts. Voices rang in the air, arguing. “Hit’s like it was with Floyd Collins. Recollect? Buried in that sandstone cave, yonder in blue-grass country.” “What, now, would them fellers be doing in a mine, middle o’ the night, I ask you that?” “Them Logans hain’t caught in that tunnel. I figger hit’s jist a general fall, the ground a-settling down of its own accord.”

Euly came and stood beside me, watching, sleep still in her face. Sid Pindler and Ab Stevall went by. They craned necks at our house as they passed. Three boys ran the road shouting. “Look,” Euly said. “Yonder comes the fortune-telling woman.” I picked her from the others. She came hobbling, her uncombed hair tucked beneath a coat collar; she was old, old, and the seams of her face were like gullied earth. Euly drew back, speaking under her breath. “Now, never do I want my fortune told, a-knowing everything coming, a-knowing when I’m going to die.”

I shook, though not from cold. My teeth struck together. “I wouldn’t want a ballad writ about folks gitting killed in the mines neither,” I said. “I wouldn’t now.”

The sun-ball rose, yellow and heatless. The burning slag heap near the tipple wound its smoke straight as a pole into the sky. The chill drove us indoors, and we looked over the camp from our kitchen window, seeing the chimney pots were cold, the people all gone to the driftmouth. I begged to go. I cried a speck, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. “Wait,” she said. “Your father said he’d send word.” And while we waited she brought a cushaw from the back porch, and began to peel away the mellow skin. “Three pies I’m going to make,” she said. “Harl and Tibb’U be starved when they get back.”

Euly’s chin quivered. “Never a bite they’ll eat,” she said mournfully. “Their mouths shet for good, their eyes with pennies atop.” She crossed the room, and I knew suddenly where she was going. She went out of the kitchen. I heard the clock door snap. I stood by the window, as quiet as a deer mouse, scarcely drawing breath. She came back looking hard at me, knowing. She whispered to Fletch and they both looked, eyes round with accusation.

When the cushaws were boiling Mother got a bag of cracklings. She crisped a handful of rinds in the stove. “Six pones o’ fatty bread I’m going to make,” she said. “Samp and your father and all the other fellers digging will be hungry. Nary a bite they’ve had this living day.” She started a pot of shucky beans cooking; she opened a jar of wild plum pickles.

A granny woman came down from the driftmouth. We saw her through the window, her breath blowing a fog. We hurried into the yard to stop her at our gate. “What have they larnt?” Mother asked.

The granny woman cleared her throat. “Nothing for shore,” she said. Her voice was thin like a fowl’s. “There’s a chug o’ rock fell down, but no sound beyond. Feller says he seed them go in the mine last night. That’s all they know—jist a feller says. Oh, never’d I trust a man’s sight Saturday after dark.”

She moved on, grumbling in the crisp air, and we heard a tramp of footsteps on the road. The miners were going home. They came on by our house, blowing into their freezing hands. They huddled together against the cold, speaking hoarsely amongst themselves. “Them two hain’t there, and never was.” “Aye, gonnies, gitting a feller up with a lie-tale in the dead o’ Sunday morning. Hit’s a sin.”

Fruit Corbitt passed.

Morning wore away. We no longer waited at the window, no longer hoping, believing that Harl and Tibb were buried beyond finding. The shucky beans got done; the cushaw pies, yellow as janders, were shelved behind the stove.

Mother gave Fletch a pickled plum and his eating of the vinegary fruit set my teeth on edge. Hunger crawled inside of me; though, larger than any hunger, larger than anything, a knot of humiliation grew in my chest. It grew like a branching root. “If only I never tuck that penny piece,” I kept saying to myself, dreading the time when Mother would know of it, being sure Fletch would tell, for he could not keep a secret. “If only I hadn’t borrowed—” And I looked up. We all looked, startled. Darb Sorrels stood in the kitchen door, filling the space with huge shoulders and the greatness of his body. His head stuck inside the room, for the door was not tall enough.

“We’ve come on that pair o’ rascals,” he said, his words and laughter sudden as a thunderclap. “They blew up the tunnel betwixt them and the opening, closing that thin-vein place where I try out my new diggers. They set the charge wrong and trapped themselves proper.”

“Are they hurt?” Mother asked anxiously.

“Not a scratch, and hollering to git out,” Darb said. “Everybody give up and left except Samp and your man. They scrabbled and they dug, and now they’s only a foot o’ rock betwixt. Any minute they’ll dig through. I tell you, that Samp is a man-mole. If I hadn’t been letting men off instead o’ taking on, I’d hired him on the spot.” He glanced at the bean pot, the pies, the pickled plums. His lips slackened with hunger.

“When the digging’s over,” Mother said, “all of you come and eat. They’ll be plenty.”

“We will, now,” Darb said gratefully. “I hain’t et since last night. We would o’ pretty nigh caved in if Coonie Todd hadn’t set a bucket o’ coffee biling for us at the driftmouth.”

“Ask Coonie Todd to come too,” Mother said. “Say she’s welcome.”

Darb turned to go, stooping under the doortop. He paused suddenly, his great head bent, listening. Boots tromped on the back porch; blunt steps passed into the far room. We waited. After a while two heads stuck through the kitchen door. Harl and Tibb stood there with clothes bundled under their arms, their mining gear hung over their shoulders. They looked at the table, then fearfully at Darb, and drew back. Mother opened her mouth, but no words came out. The door slammed, and they were gone.

“Looks to me you’ve lost two boarders and me two miners,” Darb said. “But Fd been a-firing them anyhow. I got orders yesterday to let off a dozen men, and cut down another day’s work.”

Uncle Samp told us as we were sitting at the table. Coonie Todd sat beside him, weaving willowy fingers in her lap. “We’re marrying soon’s times get better, soon’s work picks up,” he said. His face reddened, the thread veins quickening on his cheeks.

“A feller who’s got a doughbeater promised is square in luck,” Darb said, his words booming with laughter.

“Nothing sorry as a bachelor feller,” Father said, teasing. “A woman helps a man hang onto his money, and keeps him honest.”

Euly and Fletch looked queerly at me. Fletch’s chin was barely above the table. “Thar’s one o’ my pennies a-missing out of the clock,” he said. “That hain’t honest, now.”

I felt shriveled and old. All I had eaten seemed a great knot inside of me. My spoon clattered to the floor.

Uncle Samp grinned. The ends of his blunt mustache pointed like fingers. His cheeks burned. He shoved a hand into a pocket and drew something out. It was a rusty penny. He spun it on the table. “I borrowed it to get a little chew o’ tobacco,” he said, “and I plumb forgot to spend it.”

The bread was broken, the shucky beans passed, the pickle bowl lifted, hand to hand. Mother glanced at Father and Uncle Samp and Darb. She looked at Fletch and me. Her eyes were bright as a bird’s. “All you fellers have buttermilk mustaches,” she said.

FLETCH tiptoed through the kitchen and into the far room, closing the door between quietly. The latch barely clicked. He didn’t see me behind the meat box. Only Old Bartow had found me there. I sat hidden, looking at the signs of the zodiac in the Indian Doctor Almanac. A man stood on a page with his belly covering off. Printed beasts and varmints circled about. “A feller going to be a doctor ought to know the in-sides of beings,” I thought to myself.

I heard Fletch rummaging in the far room; I heard him stack one chair upon another, quiet as could be done. Uncle Samp was taking a nap on his bed and his muffled snoring was unbroken. Mother could not have heard where she rested in the front room. Fletch came out presently, passing on to the back porch. I peeped. He carried something in his fist. A hand was doubled tight against his chest. I stayed in my hiding place, looking at the odd picture-piece. Three meat pokes hung inside the printed man. I felt my own stomach, wondering if these things were there. Then I grew curious about Fletch and went to see why he stacked the chairs. He had reached to the mantel. A beeswax candle, a fox horn, and a pin pear lay upon the board. Nothing was gone. Then I looked to where the dynamite pouch hung on a nail only Father could reach. Its leather mouth was pursed. “Couldn’t have touched that/’ I thought and I went back to the meat box.

I turned the almanac pages. The moon and weather of all the year’s days were there; moons with horns and faces like folk; weather flags flying red and white and black. An Indian doctor sat on the back cover. A feather grew on his head, and he held a giant bottle and a mullein leaf in his hands. I was thinking Mother ought to take this tonic for her sick spells when I heard a knocking, sharp, and steady, and near. Two rocks were being struck together. It was Fletch hammering I knew, hammering the thing he had carried in his fist. I went again into the far room, standing on a chair so as to see the mantel end to end. A dust track lay by the pin pear. I hadn’t noticed it before. Fletch had balanced himself on one leg to reach the dynamite-cap pouch. I jumped to the floor and ran into the yard calling.

A rock thumped somewhere. I searched, sick with fear. I shouted.

Suddenly the earth shook. It was like a rifle-gun being fired into the ground at my feet. A cry came from under the house. I fell to my knees, looking beneath. Fletch crawled toward me, out of a smoke of dust. He came holding his right hand forward, a gore of blood dripping. Two fingers hung by skin threads.

I stayed on my knees, not moving, not being able to move. I heard Mother’s agonized cry. I heard Uncle Samp’s heavy tread. Running feet clattered the road. Neighbor women came, aprons flying. Fletch was caught up in arms. Voices were shrill, saying what to do.

“Spider webs quick, to stop the bleed.”

“Lamp sut, I recommend.”

“Get a handful o’ fresh dirt. Dig under the doorsill. Dig down to the clean.”

“Tie them fingers in place. They’ll grow back.”

Jace Haggin came, his face stark with sorrow. “Run and fotch Father from the mine,” I begged. “Run and tell.”

Jace turned to go. “I run fast,” he said.

Fletch dozed on a bed, his right hand uncovered upon a pillow. Darb Sorrels leaned over him, studying the hand, and then went to sit before the fire with Uncle Samp, Kell Haddix, and Arlie Crouch. He threshed in the small chair. Jace Haggin squatted on the hearth, and Old Bartow meowed softly, for Jace was stroking his back. Kell was talking. “In July we got six days’ work a week,” he was saying. “Now come February hit’s down to three. If ever they’s a time coal ought to sell hell-for-sartin, it’s this month. Working three days now. What’s hit going to be, come spring?” Kell and Arlie looked querulously at Darb, thinking he might know what was in store.

“Hit’s ontelling,” Darb said. “No use wearing your mind to rags a-worrying. I say take it as comes, fair or foul.”

“Twelve chaps in my house—” Kell began. His Adam’s apple leapt.

Father came into the room with a pan of water. He spoke quiet-like to Darb. “Reckon the fingers kin be saved?”

“Stands to reason they’ve got to come off,” Darb said, his voice hoarse in trying to speak low.

“Might’s well get it over then.”

I looked at Fletch, and he was awake. He had heard. I spoke small into his ear. “Uncle Toll never cried when his finger was cut. Him just a baby too. Grandma said he never.”

“I hain’t scared,” Fletch said. His lips were trembling.

“If’n you won’t cry,” I promised, “tomorrow I’ll show you the pattern of a man’s insides. I got a picture-piece shows.”

“I hain’t scared.”

Father approached the bed, an opened pocket knife flat against his leg. The veins were swollen where he grasped the handle. I felt bound to see this thing happen. Fletch would want me to see. But I chilled with fear, and backed away.

It was over in an eye-bat. I saw nothing. Fletch made no sound.

Darb began to tear strips of flour sacking for bandage. “I tell you this chap’s got nerve,” he grinned. “I never saw the beat.”

Jace and Kell went to look at the severed fingers. They lay on a trunk. Old Bartow sprang upon the trunk to look too. “A thing like that makes a feller reckon,” Kell groaned.

“Little man,” Darb said. “There’s two gentle mules in my lot longing for riders. I’d be proud to have you and your brother come ride them sometime. Come when the notion strikes.”

“Air them beasts still alive?” Kell asked. “I heered you was going to be rid––”

“Not yet,” Darb answered.

Father whirled suddenly, glaring at Jace. “Put that there back on the trunk,” he said. “Put back!”

“Born witty,” Arlie Crouch blurted in disgust.

Fletch sat up in bed. His face was grave as an old man’s. He held the bandaged hand before him. “How long hit’s going to take growing me two fingers back?” he asked.

THE robins came back in February and black-headed cocks walked the camp yards. Robin hens grew fussy, pushing their pale breasts out as though shaping their nests already. The cold spells at Old Christmas and during the week Ruling Day fell were the only times I had need to put on my red woven coat. A4iners cursed the warmth. They shook heads so fiercely cap lamps oft would go out. They eyed the sun-ball and quarreled. “Mines can’t keep open long’s folks don’t burn fires.” “Sweating in February, hit’s agin nature.” “Why, my babby-child has got a heat rash.” They spoke of remembered winters, winters when ice choked the creeks, when timbers broke under its weight. They measured hands on hips, marking the snow’s depth, swearing oaths as tokens of truth.

The mines cut down to two days’ work. Houses emptied. Lanterns bobbed along the road at night as loaded wagons moved out of Blackjack. Idle men sat on the storehouse steps watching the shifts go into the pit, and they were there when the miners came out again. Uncertainty hung like slag smoke over the camp. Father grew quiet. He was worried about his job, and about Mother. Mother was ill, and often abed. Her body had swollen until she could scarcely walk. She lay awake at night worrying over Grandma, for Uncle Jolly had written a letter saying she was sick. “Come for shore,” Uncle Jolly had said. “Could I go see Ma,” Mother kept saying, “hit would be a satisfaction.”

I went barefooted through the camp, going where I was of a mind. Neither Mother nor Father scolded me. Fletch’s hand was not yet healed and Father had commanded him to stay inside the yard. Euly kept indoors, cooking and bedmaking, and waiting upon Mother. The beds she made were lumpy as fodder-stacks; she used a waste of grease cooking. I tramped the camp over. I saw what there was to see. I sat among tipple timbers listening to thunder of coal shaken into gons, and to the dolesome groan of conveyors on rusty cogs. I knew at last where the herb doctor and the fortune-telling woman lived. Under certain houses game roosters were kept hidden. I knew where. I knew the faces of men who pitted them in the birch draws above the camp.

I walked alone. Boys glanced oddly at me who had neither marbles nor spinny-tops. I gathered tobacco tags along the road, and around the company store, trading and swapping—three Old North States for a Bloodhound, five Bloodhounds for a horse-headed Dan Patch. I did not go to Darb Sorrels’s to ride the blind mules for a long time, though I ached to go. Fletch was jealous and had Father tell me to wait. He questioned me at night in Father’s presence. On a day when I could wait no longer I gave him twenty-four Dan Patches. He vowed to keep my going a secret. He marked a cross upon the ground and spat upon it to swear.

I had in head going to Darb Sorrels’s in early afternoon, but Mother was concerned about Uncle Samp. He had not slept in his bed for two nights. “Go look inside the storehouse,” Mother told me, “and if he’s not there, ask Coonie Todd. Go to Coonie’s house and ask.” I went along the road to the store. Three men sitting on the steps leaned aside, letting me pass. I opened one of the double doors and spied in. Fruit Corbitt stood behind the counter wearing a coffee-sack apron, arms resting on empty shelves. Men sat about a cold stove. Three held roosters in their hands. They spat tobacco juice upon the brown belly of the stove, turning the fowls for all to see. Uncle Samp was not among them. I closed the door, and a voice came through it. “Hold on thar, boy.” I opened it again. A finger was pointed at me. “Boy, I got a thing to ask you.”

I walked midway the room. The man turned his chair, facing me; he opened his mouth. He had a black tooth in his head. He pursed his lips to speak, but another spoke before him. A fellow leaning against the counter said: “Boy, who air you the daddy of?” The men by the stove batted their eyes. The corners of their mouths twisted.

“Brack Baldridge,” I said.

Laughter rang like a sudden bell. Elbows were thrust against ribs. The men whooped. One began to cough with joy. Fruit Corbitt grinned. He thumped fists on the shelves.

The man with the black tooth did not laugh. His eyes were cold upon me. His upper lip drew thin. “Boy,” he began, “I got a thing to ask you.” The laughter hushed. The one who coughed sniffled and swallowed. “Your pap was amongst the last miners tuck on. And he’s still a-working. Us fellers starved here during the shutdown. We stuck by. Now we hain’t even got work, and your pap keeps drawing regular pay. Where does this stand-in come from? Air you kin to the operators?”

“Why’n’t you ask Brack Baldridge?” Fruit Corbitt inquired.

A man stood up. He lifted a rooster in the bowl of his hands. The tip of the fowl’s comb touched his chin. “My woman says one o’ them Rosses used to court this boy’s mammy,” he said. “Luster Ross’s got ownership in Blackjack Mine. I wouldn’t put it beyond fact they got this boy on the payroll too.”

Fruit wiped hands on his apron. “Don’t plague the chap,” he warned.

Words were hot in my throat. “I hain’t never going to be a miner,” I said.

The man with the rooster scoffed. “Hell shot a buck rabbit!” he said. “You can’t git above your raising. Born in a camp and cut teeth on a tipple. Hit’s like metal agin loadstone. Can’t tear loose. Whate’er you’re aiming to be, you’ll end snagging jackrock.”

I glanced hungrily at the door button.

The man leaning on the counter spoke: “I figger he ought to be a blue-grass lawyer. Sharp devils, the Baldridges. Why, two days ago that Samp traipsed out o’ this camp, taking Coonie Todd with him. Said he was hunting work. Oh, he wouldn’t hit a lick at a blacksnake. That widow woman’U woe the day.”

“Them Baldridges—”

Fruit came from behind the counter. He had taken off his apron. “Let this chap be,” he said angrily. His voice rattled in his chest. I looked toward the tall double doors. I turned and ran through them, almost tripping over the men on the steps. I kept running, drawing air deep into my lungs, and a voice was bold in my ears. “Whatever you’re aiming to be, you’ll end snagging jackrock.” It throbbed in my head like truth, and however swiftly I ran, it sped with me.

I ran all the way to Coonie Todd’s homeplace. The doors were locked, the windows pegged. I knew then for sure Uncle Samp had gone away.

Jace Haggin sat atop a slate pile yon side of the tipple. He was whittling a pretty with a barlow jack. He saw me coming and hopped into the road, folding the knife, and beginning to stroke the knotched stick of a fly-jig. The wooden blade spun. It became a wheel. It hummed like a wasper.

“They’s a rooster fight in the birch draw,” he said. “I seed fellers set off. Us go.”

I shook my head.

“I’ll give you my fly-jigger,” he said. He held it between his hands. The sleeves of his three shirts were unbuttoned, flaring at the wrists.

“I be not to go.”

“I double-niggle dare you.”

I shook my head, and walked on. I walked to the creek. The creek road went east and north toward Darb Sorrels’s house, knuckled like a finger, pointing.

I stood by Darb’s lot fence. No one seemed about. The lot was empty. A spout of water poured into an iron pot by the gate, spilling over the rusty lip. A sow grunted in a pen. Something champed teeth in a stable. A beast blew sleepily through its nose.

I horned my hands. “Mule. Mule. Muley.”

The champing ceased.

“Mule-o.”

A clothy rustle came near. It was behind me. I whirled. Darb Sorrels’s wife was watching, her head deep in a splint bonnet.

“I come to ride the little mules,” I said.

The woman peered out of the bonnet. “They’ve been tuck away.”

“Gone?”

“Old, and blind, and puny. A sight o’ feed it tuck, and times are getting hard. They’d a need to be put out o’ misery.”

“Gone?”

“Gone to dirt.”

WE were eating supper and playing riddles around the far room hearth when Darb Sorrels came. We looked into his face and saw the worry there, and the dolesome cast of his eyes. A place was made for him by the fire, the rocking chair dragged forward. The rocker was the largest chair we owned. “Jist drapped in a minute,” he said. He stood, holding hands to the fire. They were of a size to cover two men’s faces. The nails were like scarifiers.

Darb refused to eat. Father and Mother pushed their plates aside. “Come to borrow a chunk o’ fire?” Father asked. He was a grain uneasy. “Set and rest your bones. These chaps have got me stumped on a spelling-riddle. I need help.”

“I’m bound to be a-going,” Darb complained, but he sat down. He wedged into the rocking chair. It creaked under his great body. The rockers bent, hard drawn. The wooden arms were tight against his hips. He watched Fletch empty his plate, then eat leavings in Mother’s. She had barely tasted the food. Fletch ate left-handed, his right thrust in a pocket. Old Bartow was licking Father’s plate. Euly made a sign at Fletch, being ashamed of his manners.

“Little man,” Darb said, “how’s your paw healing?”

Fletch wiped his mouth with a sleeve. “Hit’s well,” he said. He got up and stood before Darb, though he did not draw the hand forth. He looked curiously at the great head leaning toward him. “I bet you can’t spell ‘swampstem,’” he said. “I bet.”

“I can’t for a fact,” Darb said. “Sit on my lap and larn me.”

“Now, no,” Fletch replied, drawing away. He was ashamed to sit on folks’ knees. He went instead to squat on the floor beside Old Bartow.

“My chaps are finicky,” Father said. “Think they’re grown before the scab peels off their nabels.”

“I kin spell ‘stovepipe,’” Darb said.

“How do them letters go?” Fletch asked.

“I hain’t a-telling.”

Darb’s face darkened. “I ought to be a-going,” he said. “Jist drapped by for a minute.” But he did not rise. He swung the rocker, facing Father. The chair creaked bitterly, a round loosened in its peghole. “I been fotching an ax over the camp tonight.”

Father sat very still. How small he looked beside Darb Sorrels.

“I’ve stopped a’ready at Crown Shepherd’s, Reece Haggin’s, and Tom Clearfield’s,” Darb went on. “I got six more places to call.” His eyes searched the floor, un-seeing, “On account o’ Jace, hit’s punished me most to fire Reece Haggin. A shame to turn a witty out to graze.”

Mother listened as though she had not heard aright. Father had not told her of the lay-offs and the movings because of her illness and worry about Grandma.

“Next place I stop will be Kell Haddix’s.”

Father’s cheeks grew ashen. He looked blue-pale and wizened, like a last year’s dogtick stalk. “Reckon my time’s come,” he said.

Darb considered a moment, and shook his head. “Not quite yet,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Where air folks a-going?” Mother asked. Her voice was hollow, inquiring. Then suddenly she glanced at Father, her eyes large with hope. “Could we go back to Little Angus?” she said. “I’d be content. The first rented land ever I felt was belongen to me. And the baby is buried there.”

Fletch spoke in the corner. “I recollect we lived on Little Angus. Recollect once they was three gnat balls flying in the yard. I shet my eyes and stuck my head inside one ball.”

“Once a whirly wind come threshing a field,” Euly recalled. “I ran to it. Hit spun me winding.”

“I recollect the martins,” I said. “I recollect—”

“That farm was sold for taxes,” Father said impatiently. “Logging company bought, knocked walls out o’ the house and set a sawmill inside.”

Darb stood. “I’m bound to be going. Six doors I got to knock on before bedtime.”

Fletch scuttled out of the corner. “You hain’t told me how to spell ‘stovepipe,’” he reminded.

Darb scratched into the thick of his hair. “Stove?” He seemed to have forgotten. “Ah, yes, ‘stovepipe/ Stove to my rikkle, to my stickle, to my y, p, e, pipe.”

Fletch’s mouth opened at this spelling-riddle. He almost drew his right hand out of his pocket in wonder, but he thrust it back quickly.

Darb leaned an arm upon the mantelpiece. His head reached full to where Father’s empty dynamite sack hung. “Son,” he said, “I was born big and awkward. Never a chair large enough. Couldn’t git my legs stretched proper under a dinner table. Against I was sixteen my feet stuck over bed footboards. Used to hunch my back, bend my knees a speck, trying to look like a human being. But them was fool notions. I be as I am. I got to be tuck that way. Well, now, I notice you’re allus hiding that three-fingered hand in your pocket. I say, wear that hand like it was a war medal. Wear it proud.” He turned to the door.

Father lifted both his hands, showing his leathery calluses. “Fear I’m going to lose all my hard-earnt badges,” he said. He laughed. Laughter caught in his nose, in the top of his throat. It was a kind of cry.

UNCLE JOLLY drove a jolt wagon into our back yard on a windy March evening. We came out into the gathering dark with firelight falling behind us, and our shadows walked before like giants. Father spat into his carbide lamp, striking the flint on his palm. The flame spewed. We saw the wagon, and the weathered tarpaulin spread upon it. The mule sniffed the slag smoke; he blew anxiously through his nose, gritting teeth upon the bit. He rattled the harness with flank shivers. Uncle Jolly latched reins to the wheel brakes and jumped down. He squinted, lifting a hand to shed light from his eyes.

“This hain’t a bird threshing,” he said. “Don’t try to blind a feller.” His voice was dry with weariness. He glanced curiously at Mother. She was holding to Father’s arm. He looked back upon the wagon, and we looked too. “I was a span coming,” he said. “Hain’t slept in three nights.” He began to untie the tarpaulin, though he did not lift it. He untied it all around, and then turned upon us, angry because we did not understand. “Set two chairs in the house to hold the box,” he said. We waited, huddled in the yellow light, not moving. He caught the tarpaulin and threw it over the jolt seat. A coffin box rested on the wagon bed. Mother drew back. She swayed, her knees bent, and she would have fallen had Father not caught her shoulder. He led her into the house and sent Euly after Nezzie Crouch. He came back to the wagon, whispering to Uncle Jolly. “Hit’s getting near Alpha’s time,” he said. Uncle Jolly yawned. He shook himself. “You could tell from here to Jericho,” he said.

The coffin box was carried into the front room and placed head and foot upon chairs before the cold hearth. Uncle Jolly opened the windows and swung the door ajar, saying the room must be kept cool as could be got. “Fotch spirits to put on Ma’s face,” he told Father. “I’m bound to rest a minute.” He raised arms and yawned. A great weariness shook him, joggling his knees, jerking shoulders, flexing his mouth. His eyes watered. “Three eternal nights I been awake,” he said.

Father brought a washpan, cloth, and soda jar. “Not a drap o’ spirits in this house,” he said. “Alpha says to use soda water. Hit’s freshening.”

Old Bartow stuck his head inside the door and meowed.

Uncle Jolly ran fingers along the coffin lid. The rio lamp shone full upon it from the mantel, and lamp fry and clock tick pitted the air. On the walnut sides of the box there was not a saw mark, not a grain bur. A good sawyer had built it. The box lid was raised an inch. I dreaded to look, though Fletch stood close and unafraid, and I believed he did not know Grandma was inside. Uncle Jolly balanced the lid on the joints of his fingers. “Want these chaps to see now?” he asked.

“They’d better take out the mule,” Father said. “He oughten to stand harnessed all night.”

“He’s not a court-day plug,” Uncle Jolly warned. “He was bred at Mt. Sterling. Feed him ten ears.”

“Corn hain’t raised in a mine patch. We got not a cob. Loose him in the yard and I’ll borrow feed, come morning.”

Fletch tarried. He wanted to look under the lid. “If they’s pennies needed,” he told Uncle Jolly, “thar’s some in the clock. I got me four a-saving.”

When the mule was unharnessed we went into the house and saw Grandma. Her face was like a mold of tallow, quiet, and unbreathing. Mother sat beside the box, my red coat about her shoulders, combing Grandma’s hair. Nezzie Crouch bent over her uneasily. The metal comb crackled among the gray strands. The hair was parted, reparted, strands divided between middle finger, forefinger, and thumb, and the comb caught back into it and drawn through. Two balls of hair were wound behind the crown of the head. A high comb was set into the balls, holding them poised and tight. Mother arose and her face was nearly as pale as Grandma’s. She went back into the far room, and Nezzie Crouch followed.

I stayed awake during the long night. Fletch and Euly slept upon a pallet on the kitchen floor. Uncle Jolly unlaced his boots and stretched across the front-room bed, sleeping in all his clothes. He tossed and spoke words aloud. The chill of night air came through the open door. Father and I buttoned our pea jackets. I scrunched in a rocker, cold and wide awake, having no thought of sleep.

At eleven o’clock Nezzie Crouch came for Father, sending him abroad into the camp. She took the rio lamp away, leaving a squatty wall-burner. Flames leapt on the sorry wick. Shadow-moths beat wings against walls and ceiling. Old Bartow sat on the porch, and though I neither saw nor heard him, I knew he was there wrinkling his nose, sniffing. My eyes dwelt on Grandma. Now that we were alone I longed to speak a word to her, a word to endure, a word to go with her to the burying-ground. What word? I could not think. Father would be returning soon and I must hasten. My breath quickened. My throat seemed a stretched thong. I heard steps. I leaned out of my chair, my eyes straining toward the coffin box. “Grandma/’ I called. “Grandma.”

Father came into the room. His teeth chattered. “They’ll be a skim o’ ice come morning,” he said. I heard the back door open and close; I heard voices, and the chock of women’s feet upon the floor. A fire was lighted in the kitchen stove. A tub of water was set to boil.

After midnight Uncle Jolly started on the bed. He jumped to his feet, stamping the floor. “Kill that robber cat!” he shouted. Old Bartow was sitting under the coffin box, his head lifted, his nose trembling. He had stolen in unbeknownst. He whirled, springing through the door, swift as a weasel. Uncle Jolly drew on his boots and did not sleep again. He sat on the brass-bound trunk rubbing his eyes, and began to talk. The wall lamp was burning steadier. The room seemed to wake.

“I fotched me a good mule all the way from Mt. Sterling,” Uncle Jolly said, “and I’ve cleared new ground for planting. Grubbed roots middle o’ winter, hit was so warm. Come spring, I’m going to put in an early crap.”

“Spring’s here a’ready,” Father said. “Hit’s been since Ruling Day.”

“I saw green rashes yesterday,” Uncle Jolly said, “but I never figure spring’s in for shore till the basket oaks sprout buds. Never spring till a titmouse whistles lonesome.”

Father slid hands into his breeches, seeking warmth. “You hain’t told the burying plans,” he reminded. “Alpha will want to know when she’s able to be told.”

“I’m doing what Ma said do,” Uncle Jolly replied. “Taking her to Flat Creek graveyard.” He seemed irked by Father’s asking. He cocked his head, listening for the mule, and tried to peer through a window. “You know what?” he said. “When I come into Blackjack Holler I says to myself: ‘Why’s this camp so dole-some?’ Dark was setting in nigh half the houses. Nobody on the road.”

“Twenty-seven houses empty.”

“Where on God’s square earth did they go?”

“Somewheres, hunting work and bread.”

Uncle Jolly eyed Father curiously. “You hain’t been cutoff?”

“I quit free-will.”

“Be-grabs. Your woman called to straw, and it hard times.”

“I tuck a notion.”

Uncle Jolly shrugged. He lifted a hand toward me. “Never I’d be a raggedy-rump miner.”

“Take a hook to your own weeds,” Father said.

The squat lamp quarreled with a draft. A smoke thread wormed the chimney.

Uncle Jolly balled fists and thumped his knuckles. “Bracky,” he said, “I’ve just about got my cats threshed. Ever hear o’ that pretty girl I fit Les Honey-cutt over? Tina Sawyers? I writ I’d be at her home-place next Sunday, fotching Sim Mobberly and a license. Now you all can come and live with us on Lean Neck.”

“I was born to dig coal,” Father said. “Somewheres they’s a mine working. Fires still burning the world over, and they got to be fed. All the hearthstones in North Americkee hain’t gone cold. I been hearing of a new mine farther than the head o’ Kentucky River, on yon side Pound Gap. Grundy, its name is.” His eyes ran over the room, over the grooved timbers of the floor, the ceiling hanging high with no rafters, the bed, the clock, the smoking lamp. “Hit’s a far piece to Grundy, three days’ travel. Can’t haul all our belongings. We’ll sell and give away. We’ve got to begin over again. We’ve got to start from scratch.”

“You hain’t certain to get work.”

“Nothing hain’t shore this day and time.”

“Hit’s a blind chance.”

“We’ll make the bung fit the barrel.”

“I say find out before setting off.”

“We’re moving from Blackjack to somewheres. Might’s well be Grundy.”

“Be-grabs if you folks hain’t a pack o’ Walking John Gays, allus a-going. Don’t warm one spot o’ ground for long.”

An iron shoe smote a rock. The mule was walking the yard. We followed him with our ears. He nuzzled dry bluing weeds and the egg tree, and sounded a low bray of anxiety. He began to crib teeth on a fence plank.

Uncle Jolly spoke. “I aim to settle. I’ve got me a young mule, new ground cleared, and soon to have a doughbeater fair as ever drew breath. Bees to work my red apple trees, grapevines—” He paused. “And I got me a notion. Read in a magazine-book where a feller can raise and sell squabs. A passel o’ pigeon boxes I’m going to build.”

Father scoffed. “Hit’s printed a feller can catch bull frogs and net butterflies for a living. All foolishness.”

“I kin raise pigeons for a fancy.”

“In jail and out, dinnymiting mill dams, forever plaguing Aus Coggins. I pity the woman you fool.”

“Brackstone, you don’t know square to the world’s end. Aus Coggins allus blamed me. Allus I cussed and swore the contrary. Then I larnt who was punishing Aus.”

“I’d swear it was you in a law-court.”

“Ma cut Aus’s fences, burnt his barns, and strowed salt over his land. His farm got briny as the salt sea.”

Father glared at Uncle Jolly. “Hell’s bangers!” he gasped. He knew it was the truth.

“Ma told on her dying bed, but I’d known a full year. Once I caught her hiding the wire cutters. And every time I went to Hardin Town she had me packing salt home. I never let on. I was that good tickled. Ma paid Aus his due, by juckers.”

Someone in the kitchen closed the door between the two rooms. Feet passed quick and small over the floors. Father went to the door and stood for a while, his hand on the knob. But he did not go in. He came back to his chair, worried and restless, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “Alpha’s so puny we can’t go to the burying,” he told Uncle Jolly. “Tell Luce and Toll we wanted to come.”

“Why, Luce and Toll hain’t going to be there,” Uncle Jolly explained. “I’m doing pine-blank what Ma told me to do. On her dying bed she said to nail together a coffin box and get neighbor-women to make a shroud. I promised to take her straight to Flat Creek and bury her down alongside Father. ‘Send nary a word to my chaps/ Ma said. ‘They wouldn’t come when I was low in health. No need they haste to see me dead. Of a summer’s day when the craps are laid by you all can hold a funeralizing if you’re of a mind. Get Brother Sim Mobberly to preach gospel at my grave.’ “

“A body a-dying hain’t in their right mind. You ought to sent word.”

“I tuck a vow.”

“You broke it a-coming by Blackjack.”

“My mule needed rest.”

The sleepless hours weighed upon my eyes. I dozed. On awaking, the blackness of the window was tempered with gray. Higher, along the ridgetops, light was growing. It was colder. My legs were bound with stiffness and my breath fogged. Father had tilted his chair, making talk, questioning. “What if this Sawyers girl says no?” he asked Uncle Jolly. A woolly mist curled out of his mouth.

“She’s said yes a’ready. Jist never said when.”

“Of a sudden you’re in a mighty rush.”

Uncle Jolly got up and stretched. He caught the muscles of his neck and shook himself full awake. He drew a great breath of air. “A man’s the master,” he said. “I writ that letter saying when.” And then he turned toward Father, treading the floor to limber his knee joints. His mouth opened, rounding. A sly grin lifted his jaws. “You know what I done to that letter? In a magazine-book I read where a feller could buy sneeze powders. I fotched me some by mail. Well, now, I dusted that letter good and proper. I dusted it to a fare-you-well.” Laughter rattled in his chest; it choked in his throat.

“Hush,” Father said. He lifted a hand to an ear, catching for a sound through the walls. He had heard something. “Hush.”

Uncle Jolly stumbled to the porch, smothering his joy. He clumped into the yard. Father stood again at the kitchen door, grasping the knob, waiting; then he went inside. I heard feet walking, walking. The kitchen fire was being shaken and replenished; the yeasty smell of morning bread hung on a windy draft. I closed my eyes, being near to sleep. I looked at Grandma in the dark of my head where I could see her living face. “Grandma,” I spoke, “where have you gone?”

I waked, trembling with cold, and it was morning. The coffin box had been taken away. The chairs sat empty upon the hearth. I ran outside, and there were only wagon tracks to mark where death had come into our house and gone again. They were shriveled and dim under melting frost. I turned suddenly toward the house, listening. A baby was crying in the far room.