But why do y’all work fer ’em, iffen y’all feel thet way? she thought. She didn’t say it, though. That was not the sort of question you asked someone. Ma would’a slapped her face for being pert if she spoke like that in Ma’s hearing.

And . . . his description seemed entirely unreal. How was it possible for there to be nothing but bare ground where nothing would grow? Here, in the middle of thick forests and green fields? Even back in Soddy, things grew. They didn’t grow real well, ’cause of all the soot, but they grew. Surely he was exaggerating.

But she didn’t even think of challenging him. He was a man growed, and she was just a girl.

Caleb waxed eloquent about his family and their—well, it wasn’t a farm, no more than what Jeb Sawyer had was a farm. But it did sound like a little spot of paradise. There was an extensive garden, and they had several pigs, a lot of chickens, and a cow, but it wasn’t a farm they relied on to supply their prosperity. The bulk of the family fortune was tied up in cartage: the two big wagons for hauling copper, ore, or timber and the twelve mules, plus two spares, for pulling them. Caleb knew every one of his mules by sight, personality, and name, and described each of his team and its temperament in great detail, while she listened attentively. It was clear he thought of them as family, too.

When they stopped for dinner, it was deep within heavily wooded hills, covered with trees right up to the roadway. But they didn’t have the road to themselves, not by any stretch of the imagination. All the way, they’d met with other dray wagons, coming the opposite direction, heading to Cleveland. And when they stopped, it was at an enormous clearing and pond, with three other carts already there, and it was clear this was a usual stop for all the carters. There was not just the clearing itself, there were water-troughs hewn from the trunks of trees for the mules, and buckets to fill those troughs from the nearby pond. Caleb made the point of unhitching his three pairs, taking each pair to the trough and watering them and hitching them back up again, before helping Anna down off the seat and taking Missus Sawyer’s cheesecloth-covered basket out of the bed.

The basket was full of sandwiches. Bread and butter and thin-sliced country ham, bread and strawberry jam, bread and butter and sliced cucumbers. Missus Sawyer’s bread was much better than Anna’s Ma’s was. The butter was a positive revelation. The ham was sliced so thin it was practically transparent, but its flavor was powerful enough to make you feel like you’d eaten a thick slice. But after eating one and seeing Caleb wolf down two, while ignoring the cucumber ones, Anna left him the ham out of pure politeness and ate jam and cucumber. She’d never had cucumber sandwiches before; her Ma only made sour pickles with cucumbers.