Next day midmorning under a dense low sky folded upon itself like beaten tin, holding snow, Norman was out around the barns when he heard the hard chuck of buggy wheels rising toward the farm and before it cleared between the dull barren trees he had one of those moments where he knew not only who was coming but why: more than guesswork but as if it had happened before. And so met them in the yard and lifted his son down, the boy with his head turned down and away but not so much that his father did not see the blackened eye and blood-crusted nose and Jamie fought against his father’s lift and so broke open the scabbed nose and stood then on his own, glaring up at his father, blood running down over the etched thrust lips with his hands curled to fists at his sides as if ready to fight again, making no effort to wipe the smear clean from him. Norman stood looking down at him, not yet looking to his sister at the reins and said, “I expect the other feller’s marked some.”

“There was three of em.”

“Unhh,” Norman said. “That’s a bunch.”

“Bastards.” The boy turned then and walked toward the house. Most of the way there the entry way door opened and Abby stepped into it and watched what was coming on steady toward her and only when he drew close did she stoop and spread her arms and only then did he break stride and run into her. Six years old in six weeks.

Norman turned to his sister. The woman he loved so dearly, with least encumbrance. Only, he thought, because they held enough remove between them. Which started with the war, that absence that allowed them both not to know each other in ways that would lead to less than cherishment. She was wrapped in wool with her lips and cheeks chapped. He said, “You beat the snow at least.”

She looked down at him. “Boys are vicious creatures.”

“Yuht.”

“I feel to blame. I raised them to know better.”

“I know it.”

She studied him. Paused with that. Then, “I did you know. Maybe I would’ve anyway but what caused me to, was you. You and Leah.”

“I know that too.”

“But it didn’t do any good.” Her eyes like stone still hot out of the ground.

He nodded as if agreeing. “Boys run to a pack. Nothing so much as like good house dogs run off and joined up with one another. The ones’ll run deer in the winter just to hamstring them. Boys don’t know what they’re doing. But they get older you know. Life moves them along, like it or not. Seems to me it’s too soon to say if you did any good or not. I expect you did. Why, just bringing that little feller back here this morning, taking him away from them, I bet they already learned something.”