Norman let himself down by his hands on the timbers until his boots struck the sawdust in the blueing dusk. He went to the team and lifted their feet, cupping one mitten under each thick hoofwall to hold it against his knee as he scraped out the packed snow and ice with his pocketknife. The horse breath now hot steam in the cold. Stepped the team to the sledge and lifted the pole and hooked the neckyoke to the collars and then down the pole to attach the tugs by trace chains to the doubletree and evener. Then took up the lines and walked to the back of the sledge and stepped up behind the load. The saws and axe already wedged in on top. He gathered the lines in one big double loop in his right hand and held each line taut and looked down the backs of his horses. The evening star was up over the eastern ridgeline. The horse’s nosebags dangled from their outside hames. He was cold now and felt the day’s work in him. The woods were dark behind him and he felt a vicious thing not of the place, an intruder in his own life. Some rot. Some weakness that allowed the woman down the hill to be his reason for all things done and not done. As if he lacked something essential other men had or might have. He did not know. There was no reason to think his father would be proud of him, living or dead. He spoke to the team. “Get up now, boys.”

The last Sunday in February the weather still had not broken and Leah was growing large, settling into and rising from chairs and the bed with effort and strained groans. Connie came back up the hill after church with Pete trotting hard between the shafts. She had not gone to dinner with her mother at Mrs. Breedlove’s but come straight on. Once in the house she filled the copper boiler and lifted it onto the range and opened the flues. Rushed up the stairs and back down with clean undergarments and a dress over one arm. From his seat in the parlor Norman saw it was the dress she’d traveled home in. He hadn’t seen it since. He glanced to Leah sitting with the family Bible open on her lap, wedged up against her belly and held from beneath by both hands. She would spend an hour over a page. Time to time a noise would issue from her mouth, a sipping sound as if taking something in or a more clear louder chirp of doubt. She met his raised eye and cocked head and only shook her head, a gesture emphatic enough to shame his questions. Connie closed the door to the kitchen and was in there some minutes before she came into the parlor to stand hands on hips and announce, “They make a reservoir now clamps to the side of a range by the firebox and allows for hot water all the time. None of this having to wait. Seems a small luxury in a house with a baby coming.” Then turned and went back into the kitchen, the door sucked to by her passage.