After a moment she reached and ran a finger down from his ear along the line of his jaw and held the tip of her finger against his chin and stroked him there and then took her hand away. He waited a moment more and without turning his head reached behind him for the cigarettes and leaned to hold himself upright with his elbows on his knees. He said, “It wasn’t nothing but a chimney fire. But I wasn’t to home and so they tried to pin it on me. Once a person thinks you’re a certain way, that’s the way you stay in their minds. It doesn’t matter what happens. That was March of this year. I guess it’d been a couple years since he swept the flue. Burnt the house to flinders, what was left of it anyway. Pretty much all what was left was the cellar hole filled up with charred timbers. So the minister took me in. He and his wife didn’t have any children and I guess they had hopes for me. I got a decent suit of clothes out of it. And I waited until the last bit of that land was sold and I had a little cash and came north. Went to Barre because that’s where the train was going. But maybe, I figure, I was going to meet you.” And sat still and did not look at her.

“That’s some tale.”

He could read nothing distinctive in her tone. So turned his head just enough to look at her. “It’s the truth,” he said.

She said nothing.

So again, his voice gentle and low and sweet, just only a prod, said, “We’re orphans, you and me. We can do anything.”

She leaned toward him then. Her voice also low, urgent, some taint of threat. “I make my own way.”

He looked at her. Wanted to touch her and did not. “You really sing?”

“Like a bird to break your fucking heart.”

He nodded. “Tomorrow, we’ll take the train and tour around. You’ll see, this is a different place. We can do anything we want here. We can do it straight. There’s ins and outs to figure but all that is, is a little time. It’s a good place.”

“I don’t believe that. For a minute.”

He nodded. “Tomorrow, you’ll see.”

She leaned closer and ran her hands over his head. Her fingers turning furrows in his hair, stroking through to his scalp. The fingers already telling him what he wanted to know. And he knew the trick was never to reveal that he knew a thing before it was announced otherwise. So he sat under her touch.

“If you fuck with me,” she said, “I’ll cut your throat.”