“Get on with it,” Adam said irritably.

Lee got up and went to the window, and he finished the story, looking out at the stars that winked and blew in the March wind.

“A little boulder jumped down a hill and broke my father’s leg. They set the leg and gave him cripples’ work, straightening used nails with a hammer on a rock. And whether with worry or work—it doesn’t matter—my mother went into early labor. And then the half-mad men knew and they went all mad. One hunger sharpened another hunger, and one crime blotted out the one before it, and the little crimes committed against those starving men flared into one gigantic maniac crime.

“My father heard the shout ‘Woman’ and he knew. He tried to run and his leg rebroke under him and he crawled up the ragged slope to the roadbed where it was happening.

“When he got there a kind of sorrow had come over the sky, and the Canton men were creeping away to hide and to forget that men can be like this. My father came to her on the pile of shale. She had not even eyes to see out of, but her mouth still moved and she gave him his instructions. My father clawed me out of the tattered meat of my mother with his fingernails. She died on the shale in the afternoon.”

Adam was breathing hard. Lee continued in a singsong cadence, “Before you hate those men you must know this. My father always told it at the last: No child ever had such care as I. The whole camp became my mother. It is a beauty—a dreadful kind of beauty. And now good night. I can’t talk any more.”

[3]

Adam restlessly opened drawers and looked up at the shelves and raised the lids of boxes in his house and at last he was forced to call Lee back and ask, “Where’s the ink and the pen?”

“You don’t have any,” said Lee. “You haven’t written a word in years. I’ll lend you mine if you want.” He went to his room and brought back a squat bottle of ink and a stub pen and a pad of paper and an envelope and laid them on the table.

Adam asked, “How do you know I want to write a letter?”

“You’re going to try to write to your brother, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“It will be a hard thing to do after so long,” said Lee.

And it was hard. Adam nibbled and munched on the pen and his mouth made strained grimaces. Sentences were written and the page thrown away and another started. Adam scratched his head with the penholder. “Lee, if I wanted to take a trip east, would you stay with the twins until I get back?”

“It’s easier to go than to write,” said Lee. “Sure I’ll stay.”

“No. I’m going to write.”

“Why don’t you ask your brother to come out here?”

“Say, that’s a good idea, Lee. I didn’t think of it.”