I went to the water shelf for my bucket, standing on my toes to reach the handle. As I pulled it down I heard a mousy noise. I stood on a bench and looked, and there was a bat in the shelf corner. I opened my bucket and popped it in, closing the lid tight. I walked out of the churchhouse with Euly, Leth coming behind us. “It’s not more than a quarter mile up to Uncle Hodge’s place,” Leth said. “He’ll be coming soon.”

The scholars stood at the graveyard fence, looking up the creek road where Bee had gone. Euly, crying a little, caught hold of my hand. “I ought never told,” she said. “It’s ruint our only chance earthy.”

Hodge Mauldraugh came down the cove road, walking slowly, walking with his right hand in his hip pocket, wrist-deep and bulging.

“Uncle Hodge ain’t going agin his swear word,” Leth said, and his speech was anxious, justifying his kin.

I looked at Leth and I saw then that he had Mauldraugh eyes, like Bee’s. I stood apart from him, hating him suddenly. I drew out the two marbles he had given me, dropping them at his feet. They lay on the ground, green as millet juice, but he did not pick them up or look where they had fallen.

Hodge came into the churchhouse yard, bending a little to search the windows. We heard his feet clump on the front steps, the floor boards rub under his weight, and a pistol shot. I turned and ran down the creek road, sick with loss, running until there was no wind in my body. Euly came swiftly behind, soundlessly as a fox runs.

We climbed the hill to our house in early afternoon, standing breathlessly at the door, looking in at Mother playing with the baby. I pulled the lid off my dinner bucket and the bat soared out, swinging like a leaf in the wind.

“B-a-t, bat,” Mother said.

II

II

FALL had been dry and the giant milkweed pods broke early in September. Lean Neck Creek dried to a thread, and all the springs under the moss were damp pockets without a sound of water. Father had sent me over from Little Carr to stay with Grandma while Uncle Jolly laid out a spell in the county jail. Though Grandma was seventy-eight, she had patched two acres of corn. Even with the crows, the crab grass, and the dwarf stalks she had made enough bread to feed us through the winter. But there would be little for the mare. The hay-loft was empty and the corn-crib a nest of shucks.