When she ran out of tears, she felt again the dark bubble of anger that had risen within her the day of Velma’s funeral. She had stood there in the cemetery, numb in body and soul, watching the toe of Ben’s cowboy boot kicking at the dirt beside the grave, yearning for the mercy of snow to muffle the grate of the shovels striking cold earth. Bobby was off by himself, bawling in a grove of pine trees. Jim Lindquist stood next to her with his head bowed, hat in hand. That little preacher started talking, his lips flapping like turkey wattles. Our dear Velma has gone to a far better place, she dwells in Beulah land. Emaline had screamed, a piercing scream that echoed over the gravestones. The preacher swallowed whatever he was going to say next and stared at her. She turned on him in a fury. How do you know she’s in a better place, Preacher? How do you know? If heaven is a place where they’d allow the likes of you, it’s not good enough for my mama. You kept her in your damned church past midnight on New Year’s Eve, that’s why she got sick, you stupid man! You stupid man! That’s why she’s dead! She would have kicked him in the shins, would have kicked God in the shins if she could get at him, but Ben and Jim lifted her away from the grave and half carried her, sobbing, back to Jim’s truck, where Ben sat and tried to comfort her while Jim went to watch the men pile earth on Velma’s coffin.

It was all so unjust. Velma was such a good woman, such a brave woman. She was gone too soon and now Jim had given away whatever was left of her. Emaline had been angry at the preacher, angry at God, angry at Eli, but now she was angry at Jim and no one else. She marched outside and paced back and forth in front of the house while Charlie and Calla smoked cigarettes and kept their distance. She was so wrought up she finally asked for a cigarette, took one drag, bent over in a coughing fit, threw it away in disgust. At last she saw the truck coming along the county road at a steady twenty miles an hour with Jim at the wheel.

He was barely out of the truck when she was on him, beating her fists on his broad chest, screaming, crying, so angry that she could not even make him understand why she was furious with him.

“What did you do? What did you do? Where are Mother’s things? Where are they? What did you do? Did you give them away?”

“Whoa, girl! Whoa! I didn’t give them away, exactly. They came and just took everything.”

“Who? Who came and took her things?”