I saw Bob throw off his coat and hat in the tack room and I crossed the backyard rubbing my arms. Despite the cold, he knelt on the slick boards under the pump and jerked the handle till water gushed over his head. Goose bumps spread over his back.

“What say, Bob.”

He grinned. “Well, hello there, doorknob.” He reached a cold wet hand out and I yanked it once like a homespun farm boy.

I needled, “The saints still call you one of their own, or have you yielded unto temptation?”

He gave me a quizzical look, as if he suspected I’d been reading mail meant for him. Then he said, “I’ve got change in my pockets. That’s all I care about.” He washed with hard yellow soap and I changed the subject to medicine and Simon’s demise and I humped Bob’s saddle and blanket into the barn while he brushed his pants off with a currycomb and buttoned on a stiff flannel shirt that was like cardboard on the clothesline.

He said, “Did you notice how peculiar Minnie was?”

I said, “I don’t think I’ve spoke three words to her. She’s stayed pretty much to herself.”

He said, “It’s like I haven’t arrived yet.”

He stomped the dust from his boots and joined the family in the living room where tallow candles were out on the tables and a glass bowl heaped with rust-colored leaves sat on the head of the coffin. Minnie was sitting with my sisters but looking out a window that had started to frost. Bob stood by the oil lamp where the wallpaper was peeling down, combing his hair flat, staring at his sweetheart, wiping the water trickle from his neck.

“She’s lost heft too,” he whispered.

I said, “Why don’t you be quiet about her.”

Some visitors arrived for viewing after their Thursday night chores and with my brothers Ben and Charles and Henry and their wives and children, plus my sisters who were still at home, we had to take turns at the dining-room table, eating bowls of pork-belly stew and corn biscuits. Bob was still observing things about his loved one, and Minnie’s eyes were avoiding. When she spoke at all it was about cooking. She thought pound cake was too heavy with four eggs.