Norman ignored this, certain come winter or spring he’d find stumps in the far reach of his own land, knowing Ballou enjoyed selling her own wood to his mother. He said, “I need ten cords for the winter.”

“Them nigger women don’t know no snow. Got to keep em warm and it take more than what you got, eh, Norman?”

“Henri, you got that much wood or not?”

Ballou sucked his pipestem. “How soon you want this ten cord?”

“Two weeks.”

“No.”

“Two weeks.”

“Can’t be done.”

“Your boys around?”

Ballou looked around the yard as if to spy them there. He shrugged. “Out the woods somewhere.”

“You got plenty of help then.”

Ballou fired the dead pipe. The smoke smelling like the day itself. When it was well lighted he said, “October fifteen. Ten cord.”

“Split and stacked.”

Ballou spit. Agreeing.

“I pay when it’s done.”

“Half and half. I got to have something keep the boys out the woods.”

“Five cords, half. The other five, the rest.”

Ballou shrugged. “You want some tea?”

“Thanks, Henri, but I got to get on. I got lots to do. Give my best to your Missus.”

“That war, she bad, eh?”

Norman nodded. “Yuht.”

Ballou gazed off, done with it. He looked back at Norman and said, “Well get on with you then. The boys and me we start this week. Come a load and meet your own Missus, eh?”

Norman went back around the mountain, the afternoon failing, the light rich as butter. The two-wheeled cart was out in the yard before the open barn doors, resting its horseless shafts on the ground. Connie came from the barn and picked up the shafts and backed the cart around into the barn, Norman guessing she’d arrived home and left the mare to stand in the yard while she went to change from her good clothes before coming back out to stable the horse and wheel the cart away. Wondering if his mother was milking. He decided to leave them alone, all three of them, for a little while, feeling some things might be worked out better with him absent. The kitchen showed a clear smoke rising with heat vapors at the chimney top. He settled at the base of a maple, his back against the rough soothing ridges of the trunk and his knees up. He could still see the farm.

Intending to sort his plans and purposes for the coming days, not only what must be said and done but also what must be established, for whatever lapses might be made then would be lapses with them forever; he knew this, and knew also that payments would be extruded, the least of them in cash or kind. Telling himself he’d known these things, these costs, all the summer long, right down to the first day that he woke to her looming beside him. Telling himself no event lies or falls unconnected to others and that will is only the backbone needed to face these things head on. Determined then to pay attention. As if his father spoke, calling for him to look sharp.