Let Me Die in His Footsteps

9

ALL NIGHT AND into the next day, the men come and go, more of them as the hours pass. They promise, every one of them, to find Dale straightaway. Folks bring food, what little they have managed to grow in their gardens. I am better with a garden than most, but folks share what they can-cucumbers, tomatoes, thick stalks of rhubarb. Someone brings eggs, only a few so they’ll stay fresh and because it is likely all they have. I fry those eggs in a spoonful of lard until there is no run left in the yolks and feed them to Juna so she’ll feel strong again and tell us about Dale. The men, most visitors too, leave straightaway because they’re afraid to be in a house with Juna, and with Daddy and me as well. Word has traveled from our house to theirs that a curse has taken Dale from us.

While no one counted out the days for me, everyone in town knew when Juna would come of age. Some mothers sent their sons to stay with friends or relatives in the weeks leading up to Juna’s day, thinking distance would save their boys from being the face Juna Crowley saw in the well. It wasn’t Juna’s know-how that frightened the mothers of Hayden County. There have been other girls with the gift, a knack for knowing things, and once these girls ascended, their gifts ascended as well. Their know-how rounded out, became something larger, greater.

Folks were unsettled by these girls who knew more, saw more, felt more, but the girls didn’t give rise to fear. The evil living in Juna’s eyes is what prompted these mothers to pack up their sons and send them away. They wondered if the evil would ascend too. Now that Dale has disappeared and Daddy’s life is cursed, folks know for certain that Juna’s evil has rounded out. It’s larger, greater than ever before.

Irlene Fulkerson comes to the house early in the day. Her husband was the sheriff until he died two months ago, and now Irlene is sheriff. Her oldest son, Buell, who is my age and has a family of his own already, is with her, as well as a handful of other men who were good to her husband and now are good to Sheriff Irlene. She wears a gray dress that scratches my cheek and neck when she pulls me into a hug. She’s full through the chest, soft, holds me a good long time and whispers that she’ll see to Dale. All these fine folks will see to finding Dale. She smells smoky, as if she must have had a time getting her stove lit this morning. When she leaves along with all her men to get on with looking for Dale, it’s like losing my mama all over again.

Near sunset, Mr. and Mrs. Brashear and Abigail come with milk from their cow, and Mrs. Baine brings two heads of cabbage, the first of her crop. They’re scrawny, have been picked too early, but they’re likely all she has to share. The four stand on the porch, all of them swatting at mosquitoes. I look for Ellis among them, wondering if maybe he drove his mama here. But there is no truck parked outside, meaning the four of them walked. I invite them into the house, offer them coffee and a seat, and while they settle in, I pour a cup of milk for Abigail and lower the rest into the well to keep it cool.

Back in the house, I place my best folded linens on the table-snow-white tea napkins my mama hand-stitched-and four silver teaspoons, tarnished, though I polish them regular with baking soda. I serve Abigail the last biscuit to go along with her milk. I wonder if she’s slept since we first realized Dale was gone.

“You shouldn’t waste what little you have,” Mrs. Brashear says, meaning Abigail isn’t allowed.

“Please,” I say. “It’s no waste. Abigail has been such a help to me.”

Since daybreak, Abigail has been at the house, brewing coffee and digging the mud out of the men’s boots, but she won’t go outside to pick from the garden unless someone goes with her. She’s even washed the clothes Juna had been wearing when we found her in the field. Three times Abigail has scrubbed the dress as if hoping once it’s finally clean, Dale will come home.

“Go on and eat,” I say to Abigail, slipping the white cap from her head and brushing my hand over her hair.

“We seen a fellow,” Mr. Brashear says as I freshen his coffee. He leans over the kitchen table as he speaks, his long, slender frame tipped forward, and he presses one ear toward me.

“We did,” Mrs. Brashear says. “Both of us seen him. Ordinary-enough-looking fellow.”

Mrs. Brashear, short and stout to her husband’s long and lean, wears a pale-yellow dress, always pale yellow even in winter, and a white kerchief nearly the same shade as her graying hair is wrapped over her head and tied under her chin. Next to them, Mrs. Baine clings to her coffee cup with both hands and keeps her eyes lowered. I’ve always thought her like a dog that has carried one too many litters. Her long hair, mostly brown but for the many wiry gray strands, hangs down her back. She is a tiny woman with narrow hips and shoulders who must have once been bigger, stronger, because the clothes she wears have a way of hanging on her such that she’s always tugging at them and tucking them in. They must have fit her at one time, probably before all those boys of hers wore her down.

“A fellow?” I say.

“What’s that?” Mr. Brashear shouts.

“You say you seen a fellow?”

Mr. Brashear slaps the table, causing his coffee to slop over the edge of the cup and Abigail to startle. “Took a shirt right off Mother’s line.”

Mrs. Baine lifts her head, her hair falling back just enough to let me see her face.

“A fine shirt,” Mrs. Brashear says. “Good, heavy shirt.”

“Figured to let him have it,” Mr. Brashear says. “What with Abigail in the house, we don’t want no trouble. If that’s all he wanted, figured to let him have it and move on.”

Mrs. Baine, still clinging to her coffee cup, scoots forward on her chair. She is looking at Mr. Brashear. “With buttons?” she says. “And a fine stiff collar?”

“He went on his way,” Mrs. Brashear says, her voice having risen to a shout, and she nods yes in answer to Mrs. Baine. “Didn’t think so much about it, except to be sorry that shirt was gone. It always pressed up real nice. Thinking now maybe that fellow is worth knowing about.”

We all turn toward the back of the house at the sound of a door opening. Mr. Brashear lowers his eyes when Juna walks from the bedroom into the kitchen, and his slender shoulders roll away from her. Mrs. Brashear turns her eyes too, pats the table with a flat palm, and points at Mr. Brashear to leave the house. He pulls his hat over his silver hair, nods in my direction without letting his eyes follow, and steps out onto the porch.

Juna’s cotton nightgown covers too little. Even in the dim light, we can see the rise and fall of each curve, the dark shadows of her intimate parts. I sweep past her, stirring up the flames of the candles I lit before dusk. A few are snuffed out. A few others dance, dwindle, and then rise again to throw a steady light. I slip a blue blanket over her shoulders and pull it closed under her chin.

“You don’t want a chill,” I say, even though the house is closed up and the air stuffy. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“There was a fellow,” Juna says, clinging to the thin blanket with both hands. She leans into me as if struggling to stand upright. She’s not been out of bed, barely eaten or taken a drink since Abraham placed his claim on her. Each time he’s come to the door, she’s told me to send him away and have him come another time. It’s likely why Abigail has barely left the house. Abraham will have asked her to keep watch over Juna.

“I seen him too,” Juna says. “Wore a fine white shirt, buttoned to the collar and at each wrist.”

Mrs. Baine stands, her fingertips resting on the table. Her brown hair hangs nearly to her waist, and her gray dress is tied off with a thin leather strap.

“That’s good,” I say, speaking as if Juna were a child. She is about to tell us what we’ve been waiting to hear, and as Mrs. Baine begins to slide around the table toward the kitchen door, I worry she’ll scare Juna, interrupt whatever she is about to say.

“Please,” I say, stroking the hair from her face. “Keep on.”

“His nose, it was bent.” Juna’s black eyes are empty sockets except when they catch the candlelight. “Crooked in a funny sort of way. Like it had been broke.”

“Good, good,” I say.

“Why, that’s him,” Mrs. Brashear says, giving the table another whack. “That’s sure enough the fellow we seen. Abigail, don’t you figure? Don’t you figure it’s the same fellow?”

“It’s the same fellow,” Abigail says, staring at the table instead of Juna.

Mrs. Baine isn’t the type of woman a person would notice. In church or at a summer gathering or on the street in town, a person wouldn’t remember her walking among the others. She is a woman who blends in, and I’ve often imagined she’d make a fine mother-in-law. I would hope to live one day under the same roof as her and call her son my husband. She is quiet, humble, happy enough to be overlooked, but as I stand next to Juna, holding her, stroking her, waiting for her to say more, I can’t stop staring at Mrs. Baine. I can’t stop the worry creeping up from the soles of my feet.

“Go on,” I say. “What more do you remember?”

“Thought it was a fine shirt,” Juna says. “Too fine for any day but Sunday.”

Mrs. Brashear nods. “Yes, it was a fine shirt. Mr. Brashear’s best. That was the fellow.”

“A fine shirt,” Abigail says.

“That don’t mean nothing,” Mrs. Baine says. “A man can walk down a road if he chooses. And he can wear a fine white shirt too. Don’t mean he stole it.”

It is the most words I’ve ever heard Mrs. Baine say. Mrs. Brashear must be surprised too, not so much by what Mrs. Baine is saying but that she is saying anything at all.

“Please,” I say, “have a seat, Mrs. Baine. Daddy or John, they’ll walk you home. It’s too dark outside. Sit a bit, wait. They’ll stop in soon.”

Mrs. Baine backs toward the door. “Don’t mean nothing, that man walking down the road.”

Juna steps forward into the glow of the candles that burn around us. She drops the blanket. It slips from her shoulders and pools at her feet.

“That’s the fellow who took our Dale,” she says.

“That ain’t so,” Mrs. Baine says, and I know the man in the white shirt is one of her boys.

There are seven Baine brothers, but only six who still live in Hayden County, all of them with their mama. All of them except Joseph Carl. He left a half dozen years ago to travel the country. He was, still is, the oldest of all the brothers. Because he’s been gone so long, he’s the only one the Brashears wouldn’t know because they moved here in the years since he left. He’s the only one Juna might not know if she were to see him walking down the road.

“That just ain’t so,” Mrs. Baine says again, and I know I’m right. Joseph Carl is back home.

“He’s the one,” Juna says. “The one in the fine white shirt with a bend in his nose. He’s the one who took Dale.”

BEING FOUR YEARS older than Juna, I remember Joseph Carl better than she. He is the one kind soul among all those Baine brothers. Even given my ache for Ellis, I know he isn’t such a kind man as Joseph Carl.

Joseph Carl was the brother who would take his mama by the arm, escort her into church or down the road through town. Walking with Joseph Carl was the only time Mrs. Baine would hold her head high so a person could see her eyes. She would nod to passersby, pat Joseph Carl’s hand, even call out a hello to one of the ladies. But Joseph Carl’s kindness didn’t serve him well in that family. It’s surely why he finally left, even knowing he was abandoning his mama to the care of those other boys. He had a yearning for something more and too much kindness to survive his family, so he packed up and left Hayden County.

For weeks, months maybe, before Joseph Carl stepped aboard a train, he talked of traveling north and west. Not so far away, he said, but look at how tall they grow their wheat. For anyone who would give him the time, Joseph Carl unrolled for them a poster that showed a man standing on a ladder so he could see over the top of his crop. This is how tall it grows, he said. Land so rich, crops sprout like weeds. When he did finally step aboard a train, most folks thought it was a damn foolish thing to do and he was a damn foolish man for doing it.

I’ve thought of Joseph Carl over the years, thought one day Ellis and I would marry and we’d go to live near Joseph Carl somewhere away from Juna and Daddy. I remembered the sun in that poster of his. The landscape had glowed orange, and the wheat was yellow, and the man who stood on that ladder had red cheeks. We would live there, where it was dry and warm and not all the time moldy and damp. I imagined Joseph Carl would be my brother, even on the day he left and I was too young to want Ellis in the way I want him now. I imagined Joseph Carl, and not any other Baine, would one day be my brother and Ellis would be my husband.

Most folks thought Joseph Carl likely died in the years that followed, or packed himself up and kept moving west like so many others when that dark rich soil dried up and blew away. I would imagine, sometimes, in more recent years, when we had a bit of dust blow through and it was a particular dark-brown shade, that it had come from a place where Joseph Carl had been and that he had touched it or walked upon it or dug it with his own bare hands.

He did write me a few times, three letters that came over two years. By the third letter, he told me he knew I loved Ellis but that it was a feeling I should be shy of. He said Ellis was a good enough man, but not as good as I might want him to be. Don’t mistake foolishness for bravery, Joseph Carl wrote. I’d tell you to find another man, but I know that’ll only make you want Ellis all the more. But I’ll say it anyway. Find another sort of man. Joseph Carl was the only person I ever knew who left Hayden County. The only person most anyone knew who left. But now, it would seem, Joseph Carl is back.

I leave the house before Juna can say Joseph Carl’s name out loud, and I take Mrs. Brashear and Abigail with me. On the porch, Abigail shakes her grandfather by the shoulder, him having already fallen off to sleep.

“Go on home,” I tell them, standing on the porch, drying my hands on my apron like I’ll be staying right here and have no other place to go. “Abraham will probably be there by the time you get home.” I say this because I can see in Abigail’s eyes, the way they are near to tearing over, that she’s scared to walk home with only her grandparents. “You all be safe, and thank you for the milk. We’ll send word when Dale is found.”

Once they are gone and their voices have faded into silence, I start up the road toward the Baines’ place. Along the way, I pass John Holleran’s home. He lives there with his mama and father. His mama has been to the house a half dozen times already since Dale disappeared. Each time she’s stopped in, she’s said she knows Dale is near and that he’ll be home soon.

Once past the Hollerans’ place, I know I’m close. All the fields here have been planted, and the tobacco has rooted itself and is growing. It’s already taller than Daddy’s. Maybe Daddy is cursed, because the crops in his field and this field and that field there, they should be the same. They’re set in the same dirt, the land has the same rise and fall, the same sun shines here as it does on Daddy’s land, but Daddy’s crop is already failing. At the break in the hickories, I stop long enough to draw in a few deep breaths. When my chest has stopped rising and lowering and I know I’ll be able to speak again, I continue up the drive toward the house.

Mrs. Baine has not yet reached her front door when I come upon her from behind. It’s a long walk, all of it uphill, and I’ve been faster, caught her before she’s reached her front door. She stops, probably because of the sound of my footsteps. In the dark, I can’t see the look on her face.

“We got to burn it,” I say.

She nods toward the side of the house and walks up the stairs and disappears through her front door.

I grab handfuls of dried-out pokeweeds growing alongside the house. There’s nothing else. No wood stacked that the boys have cut for winter. No twigs. No fallen leaves. I twist the weeds into thick strands, the closest to kindling I can find, and toss them in the barrel at the corner of the house. Things are dry. It won’t take much to get a flame going. I’ve made a good pile when Mrs. Baine returns with the shirt. The fabric is still warm. She’s taken it off Joseph Carl just now, must have stood by as he unbuttoned each button, pulled it off, folded it over, and gave it to her.

“He wanted a fine and nice shirt to greet me in,” she says as I strike the match I brought from home. “He was going to put it back. Tomorrow, he said. Was going to hang it right back there on the line. He wanted to look nice for me.”

I drop the match in the pile of tangled weeds. The flame spreads quickly until it reaches the heavy cotton. Then it fails, almost goes dark, but the fabric finally catches and the flame takes hold again. Smoke rises, and a light breeze blows it across me. It’ll be in my hair and in my clothes now. Juna will smell it on me.

“She’ll tell Daddy,” I say. “Juna will. And he’ll believe her. He’ll come here looking for Joseph Carl.”

Mrs. Baine backs away from the fire, the glow catching the underside of her chin and throwing shadows that lift up along the edges of her face.

“Where are your boys?” I ask. “Where’s Ellis?”

Mrs. Baine continues to back toward the house. “My boy didn’t do nothing. You know he didn’t.”

“Don’t matter what I know,” I say, dropping in another handful of weeds. “Now that Juna’s said it, Daddy will be coming. You need to get your boys home, Mrs. Baine. You need to hurry on up about it.”

I SEND MRS. BAINE for a shovel when the flames have fallen and the shirt is but a few orange embers. As I wait for her, I look back at the house and I see him there in the window. It’s Joseph Carl, though I was wrong about my being more likely than Juna to recognize him. Had I not known Joseph Carl was inside, I’d have not known the man looking out that window. The curves of his face have been worked away, leaving only bone to give it shape. His small eyes lie deep in their sockets, and his cheekbones flare wide over a narrow, square chin. He lifts a hand and smiles, and that’s the thing I recognize.

After handing me the shovel, and before I’ve dug it even once in the ground, Mrs. Baine is gone, up the porch and inside her house. When the door closes, I hear the latch drop and Joseph Carl is gone from the window. I throw a shovelful of dirt on the last of the fire, lean on the handle, and look down into the barrel. Still seeing a glow, I throw another shovelful.

After the third shovelful of dirt, the fire is gone and there’ll be no sign of it. I press one hand against the top of the barrel. It’s warm but not hot. Soon enough, it’ll be cool to the touch. I lay the shovel against the house, walk around to the front door, step onto the square slab of stone that acts as a single stair and then up onto the porch.

The Baines’ house is narrow. It’s one room wide and two deep. Open the front door and open the back, and a person could see straight through it. I knock and listen for footsteps. The house is silent. I knock again.

“I have to talk to him, Mrs. Baine,” I say, pressing my face to the door so I don’t have to yell. “Now, before Daddy comes.”

I saw the look in Juna’s eyes when she stepped from her bedroom. I thought it was relief that she’d finally remembered, but I know her better than that. Should have known straightaway. Her lids were stretched wide open. She was breathing too heavy for having been in bed. She was happy, though trying to hide it. The fellow in the white shirt was the answer. He was the one she could say caused her trouble. She’d been silent since Daddy carried her home, not because she’d gone too long without water or too much tobacco had leached into her blood. It hadn’t been the sun or the shock. She hadn’t worked out yet what to tell us. She had tried blaming Daddy, but then Mr. Brashear said they saw a fellow. Whatever happened, it was somehow Juna’s doing, but now she had someone else to blame.

“Whatever Juna tells him,” I say into the door, both hands and my cheek pressed flat against it, “he’ll believe her. You have to let me in.”

The door opens. For all the years I’ve ached for Ellis Baine, I’ve never passed over this threshold. I see him in town, at church some Sundays, walking a field, driving past me in his truck, and still it’s enough to root him in my thoughts every day. In one of his three letters to me, Joseph Carl said my wanting Ellis wasn’t at all about Ellis. He said I was wanting something that would take me away from the life I was living and Ellis was the least common thing among so much commonness. Ellis shaved himself while most others didn’t. His hair was more black than brown, and brown hair was most ordinary. Ellis was tall and so were others, but his back was still straight. You like that he knows a thing for certain, Joseph Carl had written. You want someone who knows things, doesn’t hope for things, because hoping is common. Hoping is easy.

After opening the door to me, Mrs. Baine slips back to her stove, where she pokes at the fire going inside. It doesn’t draw quite right, or something is stuffing up her pipe, and smoke hangs off the ceiling. Joseph Carl sits at a small stool pulled up to the kitchen table. He wears a blue plaid shirt that’s too big through the shoulders and its sleeves have been rolled up. He starts to stand, but because he presses his hands to the table and rocks forward, I see it’ll be an effort, a painful effort, so I wave at him to stay put.

“It’s good to see you, Joseph Carl,” I say.

The small house isn’t so different from ours. It’s tidy enough, what I can see of it, and keeping it such with all those boys living here is why Mrs. Baine always has a worn-out look about her. Her cast iron hangs from nails driven into the wall, and a set of three square tins, one larger than the next, sits on a small wooden shelf near her stove. They’re the palest of green and rusted at their seams. She must think they’re pretty, maybe they’re her only pretty thing, and she keeps them there so they’ll be handy when she’s cooking, though they’re likely empty. A pot sits on her stove. She’s brewing goldenrod and wintergreen, the smell seeping into the air as steam begins to rise.

“Afraid it ain’t so good to see you.” Joseph Carl smiles and begins patting two flat hands against the tabletop.

Just as Juna said it would be, Joseph Carl’s nose is bent off to the side. It wasn’t that way before he left home, so it must have happened while he was living out west. It won’t be a good story, so I won’t ask.

“Didn’t do nothing to your brother.”

“Did you see him? The two of them together?” I ask, staring at his hands. He stops patting the table, looks toward his mama.

“Sure, I seen them. Seen the both of them. Forgot about the little one. Not much more than a baby when I left.”

“She says you took Dale.”

“Give the boy my cards,” Joseph Carl says. “He was there with her. They was picking worms in your daddy’s field. Give him my only deck. Had it for years. Had it since I was a kid, but was almost home. Figured Mama’d have new cards. Didn’t need no deck of my own. Give them to the boy. I was happy to be home. Real happy. Give that boy the only gift I had. Then went on my way.”

“Did you take that shirt, Joseph Carl?”

“Borrowed it,” he says. “Borrowed it, is all. Thought to wear it a few days. Then return it.”

“Where are your brothers?”

“Looking for your boy, I suppose. Some of them, anyway.”

“Don’t tell no one about the shirt,” I say to both of them. “Not even that you borrowed it.”

“I told her I was a Baine,” Joseph Carl says. “She remembered. Joseph Carl, she said, and I told her yes. She knew me. She’s just confused, is all. Won’t tell no one I took that boy.”

“She already did,” I say.

We don’t hear the trucks until they’ve turned off the road and have started up the drive. It’s the hickories and elms that have muffled the sound. There are two trucks, at least, maybe three. Mrs. Baine leans to look out the window, and two headlights fan across her, lighting up her face for a moment. The window goes dark again. I slide onto one of the stools at the table.

“Not a word about that shirt,” I say again.

I expect the door to fly open and Daddy to stomp inside. He’ll be relieved it’s not his curse that’s taken Dale from us. Now he’ll have someone to grab onto. He’ll have Abraham Pace with him and maybe John Holleran, though John doesn’t take much to violence. Daddy will drag Joseph Carl out of the kitchen, right in front of his own mama, throw him from the porch, and put a gun to his head until he tells what he’s done with Dale. It won’t matter to him that Joseph Carl didn’t do it, and that he won’t be able to do a thing to help us. It won’t matter that maybe there’s someone else out there who did something terrible to Dale, or that maybe Juna herself did it. Joseph Carl will be someone to blame. But the door doesn’t fly open. Instead, there is a knock.

With a rag wrapped around her hand, Mrs. Baine taps the door on her stove until it’s closed. Joseph Carl crosses his arms and lets his shoulders roll forward. I look at the door but don’t stand. There is another knock.

“Cora.” It’s a woman’s voice. “It’s Irlene. Irlene Fulkerson. Open on up, will you?”

I stand, but Mrs. Baine grabs me by the arm. “Don’t you dare,” she says. “Don’t you open that door.”

“Be thankful it’s Irlene Fulkerson out there,” I say, reaching for the latch, “and not my daddy.”

The lights of one of the trucks are still lit up, and they catch me full in the face when I open the door. I hold a hand over my eyes, tip my head, and then I see them. It’s Irlene Fulkerson and John Holleran too.

“The Brashears told me,” John says. “Told me about the fellow and Cora Baine. Figured this was best.”

John has a way of looking at me. He holds my eyes a little too long, a little longer than anyone else. It’s his way, I suppose, of trying to fashion something between us. It’s how he’s looking at me now, out on the porch, the truck lights making me squint and dip my head. Even when I turn away to see Joseph Carl still sitting at the table-him looking like a passing glance of who he once was-and turn back, John’s eyes are there, waiting to latch onto mine.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” I say. “Juna, she’s confused, is all.” And then, to Sheriff Irlene, I say, “Evening, ma’am.”

Sheriff Irlene was probably just finishing up supper when John came knocking on her door and likely left her children, the three young ones, to do the cleaning up and putting away. She wears a blue blouse tucked into a full beige skirt that skims the toes of her boots. Her hair is done up in a tight knot at the base of her head. Even now, at long past dusk, it looks as fine as it would at Sunday morning services.

“Sarah,” Sheriff Irlene says, taking hold of my hand and patting it, “let’s get you home. How about that? How about that, Sarah?”

Sheriff Irlene tries to draw me from the doorway with a hand to my shoulder. When I don’t move, she gives a squeeze, and in a quieter voice, she says, “I’m worried for you, dear. You really should get home. This is no place for you.”

“Boy won’t be long for this world unless we get him to town,” John says, nodding so I’ll know he agrees with Sheriff Irlene.

“He didn’t do nothing,” Mrs. Baine calls out from inside the kitchen. She still stands near her stove, a rag wrapped around one hand.

“Be for your own safety, Joseph Carl,” John says. “Folks going to want to talk to you. Better they do it in town.”

John grabs onto my forearm, and much like Sheriff Irlene, he tries to draw me outside, but I want to stay and wait for Ellis. He’ll take care of Joseph Carl, and he’ll see me here, finally see me like he doesn’t at church or in town or on the road when he’s got himself wrapped around me. But John holds on, not with a tight grip but a grip that’s not letting go.

“We ain’t got much time,” he says when I don’t move. Then he looks to Sheriff Irlene, who gives a nod.

“You’ll come along with me now,” she says, “won’t you, Joseph Carl? We’ll have a hot meal for you. Take real good care of him, Cora.”

Joseph Carl is still sitting at the table, his hands resting in his lap, when I step onto the porch. In the last letter he sent me, he told about the dust. He said it was all the time in the air and that every green thing had died. The grasshoppers came next, and if something did manage to grow, they seized it and ate it, and when the living things were gone, those grasshoppers took to chewing the wooden handle right off a rake. Right off a rake, he wrote. He and the other fellows hung snakes, white bellies toward the sky, over their fences in hopes of inciting a decent rain. Didn’t work. And there were rabbits. Rabbits like you never seen. They rounded them up on Sundays, a circle of folks beating sticks on the ground, and when the circle was good and tight, they took the sticks to the rabbits. They cry, you know. Those rabbits cry when someone gets after them with a stick. The dust was all the time in his eyes and between his teeth, and God damn it all, he was hungry. Wasn’t everyone so Goddamn hungry?