His own father at night would stoop, rifle through the woodbox to scoop logs and small splits, lay the morning fire inside the black stove, crossing one stick over the other into one perfect square, then stutter to bed up thirteen cold stairs. Each one he would count – une, deux, trois – as he climbed, every night, closer to heaven. One morning his wife had to carry him, his body, bone-thin, down the stairs, early May, one by one, unfaltering, just as the birds began singing.