She'd known from the blaze in his eyes that she was in for it, and she'd turned to face him, hysterical with terror, when he got the strap down from the wall. The tough leather cut across her old gingham dress and ripped it open like tissue paper. The blows got her on the soft white flesh of the chest where her tan ended, the place where the flesh was just starting to round up around the little pink buttons. The pain was worse than anything she'd ever imagined.

Now they were calling her from the back porch. She heard Ma's voice, shrill with anxiety, and Paul's like a deeper echo. She lay still, feeling her face harden into hate. I'll never go in. Not ever, not even if I starve to death.

There were small noises in the barn, reassuring because familiar. A scrabbling of mice behind the rough wooden walls, a rustling in the hay from the early evening wind that blew in through the small high window. Below, in the other part of the barn, Billy and Bess made chomping noises as they ate. She imagined the velvet noses wrinkling as they rummaged for corn ears in the manger, the big yellow teeth as they chewed. They were nice horses. She had ridden Billy in from the field when she was so little her legs stuck straight out, and she could harness up faster than Paul could. Made him mad, too.

There was a summer chirping of insects in the long grass, outside, and the tiny stiff rustling the hay made under her whenever she shifted position. I'd like to stay here, she thought drowsily, like a gypsy. I could let down a rope and Paul would put food in it and I'd pull it up. Give the crumbs to the mice.

Thirteen was too old for such games, but she let herself think about it.

It would be icky in the kitchen. The smell of frying potatoes mixed with hot oily odors of the lamp, and Pa's snores from the downstairs bedroom where he was sleeping it off. The kids would be looking scared the way they did when one of them got a licking, and Ma would be moving around silently, worried because she couldn't stand between them and their father.

"Ka-tie!"

Paul's voice, getting closer. He knew where she was, all right. It was his hiding place too, but he wouldn't tell on her. He could live up here with her if he wanted, they could share their food and tell each other all their secrets, and when it thundered and lightened she would be there so he wouldn't have to be afraid. They'd sleep late in the mornings.

She moved to sit up, but the pain from her stiffening welts was more than she could bear, and her head felt dizzy the way it had when she'd fainted last winter. That was from crying. Paul made fun of her when she cried, but even Paul couldn't take a whipping from Pa without tears. Some day he was going to kill Pa. He'd been planning it for a long time, thinking about all the different ways he could do it—with a gun, with an axe, by putting ground-up glass in his food. She had felt her hate cold and strong in her chest when he talked about these plans. She felt tall and strong. She would help him.