“Now, Liza, I know my failings pretty well. I thought it might be more than that.”

“It had better be more than that,” she said. “This man has not admitted that his sons live. He has cut them off mid-air.”

“That’s the way it seems to me, Liza.”

“If he tells you to mind your own business—what then?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

Her jaw snapped shut and her teeth clicked. “If you do not get those boys named, there’ll be no warm place in this house for you. Don’t you dare come whining back, saying he wouldn’t do it or he wouldn’t listen. If you do I’ll have to go myself.”

“I’ll give him the back of my hand,” Samuel said.

“No, that you won’t do. You fall short in savagery, Samuel. I know you. You’ll give him sweet-sounding words and you’ll come dragging back and try to make me forget you ever went.”

“I’ll beat his brains out,” Samuel shouted.

He slammed into the bedroom, and Liza smiled at the panels.

He came out soon in his black suit and his hard shiny shirt and collar. He stooped down to her while she tied his black string tie. His white beard was brushed to shining.

“You’d best take a swab at your shoes with a blacking brush,” she said.

In the midst of painting the blacking on his worn shoes he looked sideways up at her. “Could I take the Bible along?” he asked. “There’s no place for getting a good name like the Bible.”

“I don’t much like it out of the house,” she said uneasily. “And if you’re late coming home, what’ll I have for my reading? And the children’s names are in it.” She saw his face fall. She went into the bedroom and came back with a small Bible, worn and scuffed, its cover held on by brown paper and glue. “Take this one,” she said.

“But that’s your mother’s.”

“She wouldn’t mind. And all the names but one in here have two dates.”

“I’ll wrap it so it won’t get hurt,” said Samuel.

Liza spoke sharply. “What my mother would mind is what I mind, and I’ll tell you what I mind. You’re never satisfied to let the Testament alone. You’re forever picking at it and questioning it. You turn it over the way a ’coon turns over a wet rock, and it angers me.”

“I’m just trying to understand it, Mother.”

“What is there to understand? Just read it. There it is in black and white. Who wants you to understand it? If the Lord God wanted you to understand it He’d have given you to understand or He’d have set it down different.”

“But, Mother—”

“Samuel,” she said, “you’re the most contentious man this world has ever seen.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Don’t agree with me all the time. It hints of insincerity. Speak up for yourself.”

She looked after his dark figure in the buggy as he drove away. “He’s a sweet husband,” she said aloud, “but contentious.”