He came down off the mountain in a pale dusk under a sullen changed sky with three birds swelling the game pouch and a four-month-old puppy who thought she understood everything about the triangle formed of herself and the birds and the boy with the gun— the pup dancing back and forth in the sheep pasture, nosing the ledges, making half-assed points at mullein stalks or milkweed pods, stopping to gobble sheep pellets, her eyes rolling toward him.

Prudence was still in the barns. A pale shimmer of lantern light through those windows. In the kitchen he and Abby worked together at the soapstone sink, dressing and plucking the partridges. “Young birds,” was all she said, an approval. Then sent him below the barns to the garden where by lantern light he cut the green leafy heads from young turnips. He came back and found the partridges cut into quarters, the pieces in a bowl of milk. Prudence was in from the barn then and the sisters worked together over the stove: Prudence whisking egg whites to peaks and slowly turning the whites into a bowl of cornmeal batter with the backside of a spoon, then dropping the batter onto baking sheets for the oven; Abby cooking cut-up Hubbard squash in a small amount of water at the side of the stove, the lumps of squash slowly softening and settling into a mass. She took the greens from him and rinsed them and chopped them fine and added them to boiling water. She cut a thick wedge from a side of bacon and minced the wedge to slivers and added those to the greens and covered the pot and moved it also to the side of the stove.

Foster sat at the table watching them, the broken-down shotgun over his lap as he cleaned and oiled it. Outside a wind had sprung while he was in the garden and now it was raining, water aslant driving hard against the side of the house. The dogs under the table, shivering with the smell of food.

Abby cut slabs from a brick of lard and melted them in a deep skillet. Prudence mixed flour in a bowl with dried herbs and spices shaken out of cans, adding and adjusting by bringing her nose close to smell the mixture. Foster watched them. He understood that his seat at the table, his dogs under the table, all of that was understood and accommodated within the pattern of their movements.

Abby turned and said, “Most times, we have this meal springtimes. When there’s young roosters to spare. Then it’s dandelions instead of the turnip greens. We never got in the habit of fall greens. The turnips are for the sheep, come winter. But it comes down from Mother. It’s not a meal you’ll have had before, I tell you that.”