Etienne was on his knees in the yard and he was hauling down on the front of his shirt as he laughed like a madman. There were streaks on his shirt and on his hands. In the evening shadow they looked like dirt, but even the boy’s young mind understood what they were.

“Mother?”

He hadn’t meant to speak out loud, but he must have, because Etienne’s laughter stopped. He lowered his head and looked directly at the woodshed. Luke moved quickly from the hole and hid under a stack of pilings leaning against the opposite wall. He thought that at any second the door to the shed would burst open and Etienne would come inside, pulling off the wide leather belt he’d used in the past. But Etienne didn’t come.

Luke couldn’t tell how long he hid there. His only measure of time was how the knothole in the wall darkened and finally became invisible against the night. He heard occasional noises: thuds and clatters, thumps on the back porch. He caught the grumble of Etienne’s pickup truck starting and the crunch of tires on the dirt road. But still he was too afraid to come out of hiding. For some time the only sound he heard was the soft creaking of the shed walls as the breeze picked up and tugged and pressed at the shingles as if trying to get inside.

Maybe he fell asleep. He couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he started violently, almost dislodging the pilings around him as he fought against the shadows. He held his breath again. A door slammed. He’d missed Etienne returning, because it was undoubtedly his truck door. That noise had become recognizable as his cue to lie low for a while but this time it drew him out of the shed.

He crossed the hard-packed yard, feeling the stones in the earth through the thin soles of his sneakers. It made him walk funny, like he was afraid that the earth would crack open beneath his tread and swallow him whole. It felt like an age passed before he made it to the low steps that led up to the cabin. He stood on the bottom step, thankful to be off the yard but afraid to go any farther.

The door opened and he flinched.

Etienne was silhouetted against the light from within, looking even larger than usual. Luke’s eyes went to his hands, searching for the belt, but it wasn’t there. The man just watched him, the rank smell of liquor wafting off him in waves. There was another smell coming off the man that Luke was unfamiliar with. Soap.

“Luc, where ’ave you bin?”