My brother, she thought, the boy who couldn't walk across a plowed field without stopping to pick up a lump of earth and crumble it in his fingers; who planted corn as though he and the earth had a secret love affair; who fed the hogs with a slow smile of pleasure, as if some hunger in himself were fed when they came up to the trough.

It was all over. Paul would never again take off his shoes to walk across the grass. Even if they let him out now, it would be too late. He's dead inside, she thought. Even if they found out he didn't do it, like in the movies. But he did it all right.

Nobody had a right to be happy with Paul shut away.

She began to cry, not noisily, but with the tears dripping silently down her face onto the rumpled sheets.

Erika sighed. Kate got up, quietly, and walked to the window. The view was the same from both rooms—a dry backyard, a few leafless trees, a segment of street with traffic lights at the corner. A few late cars rolled down the street, muffled by the light snow that had fallen.

Paul.

As long as she lived, she promised herself, she would remember everything about him. The letters he wrote her after she ran away from home. Short letters and far apart, for he was never much of a writer—but she had kept them for a long time. After Pa died and Paul took over the home place there was only one letter, the only long one, full of repetitions as if he were trying to get things straight in his mind. The script was almost impossible to read in places. As if he were free to tell her everything at last but didn't know how. There were times I wanted to do something awful to him, Katie. Every time I think how mean he was to us—specially to you. I used to dream about taking the shotgun and loading it up and letting him have it when he was like he got sometimes when he went to town. You know the way I mean. He's gone now and I know you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead—

She wasn't sure now, ten years later, whether or not she had ever answered that letter from Paul or what she might have said to him that he could misunderstand. She had been three years gone from the farm then, working in the city as a file clerk after short jobs as a waitress and a maid. If she thought about Paul in those years it was to suppose he was better off, specially with Pa gone and the farm to run the way he wanted. He'd get married and have some kids. She would go home for a visit, maybe.

Martha was the one who wrote, after she was married and tied down at home with a houseful of kids. Trust Martha to give you all the news, she'd rather visit than eat. First thing anyone knew, Martha and her husband were running the home place and Paul was living by himself in an old shack nearby. He gets along okay I guess, Martha wrote, anyhow he does enough day work to get along on but he never goes anyplace. Joe and I went over there with the kids one day and he wouldn't let us in. I'm sure he was there, the door was locked from inside and there was smoke coming out of the chimney. I'm afraid he's getting like Uncle Will when he went queer in the head and used to run away if anybody went to see him.