For a time in the summer of 1919, following the winter of influenza that left the two of them alone, he left the boy at home and paid the youngest Flood girl to walk over each day and tend him. Jamie thought this Sharon competent to watch the boy. Perhaps even felt he was offering her something in return beyond the small wage. Some refuge away from the reek of dung and constant bleat of the sheep, beyond whatever hand it was she shrank from. And she was convenient. Until the afternoon he returned to the house and found the boy halfway up one of the hemlocks, spraddle-legged on one of the big limbs, his back against the trunk, his feet dangling. The girl Sharon seated on an upturned crate, a bar of handsoap clutched like a Bible. She told Jamie, “I was frying up slabs of that cold pot roast for his dinner. He was pestering me to eat. So I told him take the pan off the stove and set it on the table while I cut bread. And he grabbed hold the pan handle and burned his hand. Then he said a bad word. I told him not to speak like that around me. He said I wasn’t his mother, he could speak as he pleased. I told him I was paid to mind him, and he’d mind me. I told him foul language can’t come from a clean mouth and I took up the soap. He ran out here and climbed the tree.”

Jamie stepped to the base of the tree and looked up at his boy. “Foster. Come down here.”

“No sir. Not with her waiting.”

Jamie stroked his chin, still looking up. “Come down here. Let me see your hand.”

Foster looked from his father to the stout girl, weighing things. Then came down the tree. Jamie heard small gasps break from his mouth as his hurt hand caught against the rough bark. Then he was on the ground and turned silent to hold out his hand. Grimed with pine tar the pink spread of fingers showed a broad band of yellow sear, the burn hard. It would be days before it would fill and blister.

Jamie said, “What happened?”

“She told me put the pan on the table. It was moved to the edge of the stove. I didn’t have any idea it was still so hot. It hurt, was all.”

“What else?”

“Well. She wanted to cram that soap in my mouth. I wouldn’t stand for it. She chased me out of the house. I climbed up this tree here.”

“What else?”

“Sir?”

“What did you say? Made her want to do that?”

“I said Shit. When I grabbed onto the pan.”