He would come home those nights, those blue nights already filled with cooking and cleaning and bone-tiredness, tiredness that felt like the dirt that accompanied it, and after the children were all put to bed she would wash, and wash, and wash and wash until the dirt was long gone but the tiredness remained and in the end she stopped out of pure exhaustion, and she went to bed, falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, seeing in her mind’s eye soapsuds, hoes hitting the earth, the clouds of dirt with weeds, grass, tiny halves of sliced caterpillars; and bugs buzzing, buzzing in her ear; and cleaning chickens, the plucking of feathers, the scraping of pink skin, pulling out the tiny pinfeathers and cutting off their orange feet, and the canning of apples and peaches and grapes and back into the tobacco fields and the barn shelter tying tobacco leaves, bright green, and the smell of tar, black and thick on her hands and dirt, dirt, dirt always dirt, and he would come home, and even though she was too tired to move she would wake and hear him coming up the trail, hear his tired feet (tired from what?) stumbling drunkenly up the steps, hear him fumbling for his keys, hear him drop them so many times, their telltale jangle echoing in the woods and back, hear him fumbling in the dark, through the dark into the room, and she would see him in her mind’s eye: his face, not as she knew in her heart it was, with bloodshot eyes, stubbly half-beard, tired cheeks, and a lazy, distant expression, but she concentrated, concentrated on a handsome him, a him on a Sunday afternoon, a green spring, down by the riverside, with white happy eyes and a smile, this she thought as he struggled with his coat, struggled with his shirt, struggled with his pants, struggled with his shoes, and as he climbed into her bed calling Woman, in a vaporous mumble, she imagined the sun brighter, and the water cleaner, and his smile kinder, and when he touched her, grabbed her like a feed sack, rough, she imagined him holding her, tender, and when he muzzled up to her neck and she smelt the hateful rotgut breath, she dreamt, oh so hard, of a clean shirt, a pretty tie, and a fresh white shirt, and when he would roll her over and say, Be good to me, woman, be good, she would think of him whispering sweetly, pleasantly, of silly things, childish things, of promised trinkets and trips and times that would, someday, happen, and when he mounted and entered her with the sigh of a peeing bull, and the pain, the quick, quicksilver pain shot up and out through her loins, and the rhythm, the rhythm, began, and she reached to grab something, anything that was not him, and she tried with all her might to remember that it was love, and that she once loved him, and that she wanted to love him and it turned into a prayer, a funny prayer because it would be lost in the rhythm that stabbed through her, that was both white and black, that brought her joy and pain, joy and pain, joy, pain, but more pain, less and less joy, and hastened within her, inside her, and she did finally grab him, did clutch him and as he called to her, called for her, crying, sobbing, as a baby, as he climbed, from his cradle, oh Lord, she hugged him, she rocked him home, and he called out, Dear Lord, oh Lord, Sweet Jesus, and she loved him, and when he was done, after the world had certainly turned catty-cornered, after she opened, gave, sought, saw, comforted, protected, released, received, after she had been the beginning, the middle, the end, after she had drunk tears, wiped snot, licked sweat, when the world had been righted and all that was left, now, was a calm, still blue, he turned over, without a word, leaving her empty and cold, and commenced to snore.