So they had Christmas. Snow kept falling. Late in the day he forced his way out to the barn. The horse stalls empty the three years he’d owned the Packard. He sat in the cold on an upturned crate and smoked, not even bothering to gaze at the moldering pile of old hay, not needing to envision the eight crates of bottled whiskey buried there. A fraction of what he needed. Which meant the long drive out to Binter’s farm and then to the rented basement in Bethlehem where he would bottle the whiskey. Then the deliveries—at night now, with the wartime prohibition still in effect until demobilization and the Anti-Saloon Leaguers boiling over the country like a hot tar. Volstead was inevitable. All which meant hustle. Hustle and duck and dodge. What had been more sport than effort now held a weight and he was tired when he could not be, weak where he could not afford weakness.

Two nights later Claire crying woke them. The two small bedrooms under the eaves were unheated save for what came up from below but she was hot to the touch, sweating and twisted in her bedclothes. By dawn she was very still, lying as if sleeping, her breathing a wet suck, the small cup of her lips smeared. Joey sat on the bedside, dipping cloths into a basin of hot water and pressing them onto the girl’s forehead. Jamie going up and down the stairs with fresh water to replace that which cooled almost as fast as he brought it. Downstairs keeping the stoves at full force, moving the pot of broth from the hot side to the cool side and back again to keep it warm. Barking once at Foster who sat silent at the kitchen table, commanding him to watch the soup, the firebox, the supply of water in the boiler. To carry in more wood from the shed. The boy rose silent and frightened; for a brief moment Jamie saw him trying to move five directions at once. His eyes keen with some anger across his father.