Sarah sat down on the bench under the window. Shivering in her thin cotton shift, she pressed her thighs together and held her arms close over her chest. Looking past the corner of the cowshed and out over the untilled land, she watched the edge of the woods and the knife-sharp shadow of the creek gully. Nothing moved. She sighed, an airy, sad sound. It was echoed from the bed as one of the little girls stirred in her sleep. Sarah left the window for the warmth of the bed shared by the three girls. She crawled in and jerked the covers sharply, winning a corner from Gracie.

Sarah was fast asleep when David finally came home. The moon had set, and he fumbled with the door latch in the dark, cursing under his breath. When it opened, he stumbled against the top step and fell to his knees on the porch floor.

“Where have you been?” Emmanuel, ghostlike in a long pale nightdress, stood in the kitchen door. David grabbed the jamb and hauled himself to his feet. His eyes were half closed. He rubbed them with the heel of his hand before he looked at his father again.

“It’s near three in the morning; I asked you where you been?”

David swayed. “What’s it to you? You’ve never given a damn.”

Emmanuel sucked in his breath. His eyes widened slightly and his lips twitched. “You stink of spirits. On the Sabbath. You’re drunk!”

“I’m drunk. If I wasn’t drunk, I never’d’ve come home. Home!” He laughed and gestured wildly at the porch, the house, the barnyard. “A pigsty. We live in a pigsty. Mam working, no better’n an Irish nigger, and me dying in that goddamn mine.”

Emmanuel backhanded him hard across the mouth. A thin black line of blood trickled from David’s lip; he wiped his mouth and stared at the blood on his fingertips. Suddenly he let out a yell and, grabbing his father by his nightshirt, slammed him against the wall. David shoved his face at his father’s until his beard brushed the older man’s chin. David was breathing hard, his eyes opaque. Pinned against the wall like an insect, Emmanuel stared back, shaken and scared.