“Deserve them? They’re here—I guess. I don’t understand you.”

Samuel wailed, “God save me, Liza! It’s not the way you think, Adam! Listen to me before my thumb finds the bad place at your throat. The precious twins—untried, unnoticed, undirected—and I say it quiet with my hands down—undiscovered.”

“Get off,” said Adam hoarsely. “Lee, bring a gun! This man is crazy. Lee!”

Then Samuel’s hands were on Adam’s throat, pressing the throbbing up to his temples, swelling his eyes with blood. And Samuel was snarling at him. “Tear away with your jelly fingers. You have not bought these boys, nor stolen them, nor passed any bit for them. You have them by some strange and lovely dispensation.” Suddenly he plucked his hard thumbs out of his neighbor’s throat.

Adam stood panting. He felt his throat where the blacksmith hands had been. “What is it you want of me?”

“You have no love.”

“I had—enough to kill me.”

“No one ever had enough. The stone orchard celebrates too little, not too much.”

“Stay away from me. I can fight back. Don’t think I can’t defend myself.”

“You have two weapons, and they not named.”

“I’ll fight you, old man. You are an old man.”

Samuel said, “I can’t think in my mind of a dull man picking up a rock, who before evening would not put a name to it—like Peter. And you—for a year you’ve lived with your heart’s draining and you’ve not even laid a number to the boys.”

Adam said, “What I do is my own business.”

Samuel struck him with a work-heavy fist, and Adam sprawled out in the dust. Samuel asked him to rise, and when Adam accepted struck him again, and this time Adam did not get up. He looked stonily at the menacing old man.

The fire went out of Samuel’s eyes and he said quietly, “Your sons have no names.”

Adam replied, “Their mother left them motherless.”

“And you have left them fatherless. Can’t you feel the cold at night of a lone child? What warm is there, what bird song, what possible morning can be good? Don’t you remember, Adam, how it was, even a little?”

“I didn’t do it,” Adam said.

“Have you undone it? Your boys have no names.” He stooped down and put his arms around Adam’s shoulders and helped him to his feet. “We’ll give them names,” he said. “We’ll think long and find good names to clothe them.” He whipped the dust from Adam’s shirt with his hands.

Adam wore a faraway yet intent look, as though he were listening to some wind-carried music, but his eyes were not dead as they had been. He said, “It’s hard to imagine I’d thank a man for insults and for shaking me out like a rug. But I’m grateful. It’s a hurty thanks, but it’s thanks.”

Samuel smiled, crinkle-eyed. “Did it seem natural? Did I do it right?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in a way I promised my wife I’d do it. She didn’t believe I would. I’m not a fighting man, you see. The last time I clobbered a human soul it was over a red-nosed girl and a Schoolbook in County Derry.”