“The only good thing happened was the baby. By God she was a pretty little thing. They couldn’t afford her, of course, couldn’t have even if they’d had a decent year, but when Belle and her were back from the hospital they started bringing her into town with them, and you could see it didn’t matter to them that they didn’t have the money. They were so damn proud, he’d come around the stores holding her, trying to make her laugh so everybody could see how pretty she was, and Belle looked better, too, more rosy again. He kept saying, ‘Things’ll be better next year.’

“Belle never came into town all that winter, and neither did the baby. It was just him, and that not often, just to pick up supplies. Back then, I don’t know what you’ve got now, but back then there was just a space heater in the living room and a wood stove in the kitchen, nothing in the bedroom, and I think the plumbing must have been pretty old-fashioned. One time McAllister was in town he said the baby had a cold.

“You have to understand how hard it must have been for them, especially Belle. She’d have to heat up water on the stove to do a washing or have a bath, and that would mean hauling wood. That winter it was as cold and blizzardy as the summer had been hot and dry, and they must have sat around, cooped up in that cabin, for weeks on end, all wrapped up in clothes and blankets trying to keep warm. In the spring, when Belle and the little girl turned up in town one day, you could see she’d made an effort, they were both clean and tidy. But the baby didn’t look right, not healthy, it was the way Belle had turned after a year, the shine was gone, the prettiness was worn out.

“It was Belle, though, that scared us. Her eyes were crazy-like, they wouldn’t keep still, wandered all over the place, and she couldn’t talk very well, couldn’t get sentences out, it seemed. It made people edgy, the way she looked, and maybe they kept away from her a bit.

“That first time into town that year turned out to be the last time she tried to spruce them up. After a couple of months she and the baby were both real thin, and just plain filthy dirty. Nobody knew what to do. It was real bad.