“If I was stone blind, I’d know a new season was coming,” Grandma said. “This time o’ year the rheu-matiz strikes my hips. The pain sets deep and grinds. Five of my chaps were born in the spring and that might be the causing.” She took to bed for a spell, and Uncle Jolly cooked for us morning and evening. Of a morning he would arise at three o’clock to make coffee and hoe-cakes before walking four miles to snake logs for Elias Horn. He had need of this work. Money for meal, meat, salt, and a tonic for Grandma had to be got. His hands blackened with resin that would not wash off no matter the amount of scrubbing, and Grandma complained bitterly, seeing his grubby fingers poking in the dough. It plagued her to lie abed, helpless. “When spring opens,” Grandma said, “I’ll be up and doing. Three days’ sun, and I’ll be well enough to beat this feather tick and hang it to sweeten.”

One morning I saw a redbird sitting in a plum bush, its body as dark as a wound. “Spring’s a-winding,” I told Grandma. “Coming now for shore.”

“Even come spring,” Grandma said, “we’ve got a passel of chills to endure: dogwood winter, redbud, service, foxgrape, blackberry. . . . There must be seven winters, by count. A chilly snap for every time of bloom.”

I wished for the thaw and greening, for I longed to go home. No word had come since Father moved to Blackjack. Few travelers turned down Lean Neck from the creekhead road, choosing the steep climb over the ridge rather than the far way around, and there was no one to ask. During those lonesome days I wondered about Blackjack, picking bare my memory of it. I remembered going there once with Father, remembered the houses crowded in the hollow with paths between, miners tramping toward the drift-mouth, caps lit and dinner buckets hooked to belts. It was like a place dreamt. There now was our house, a dark, boarded camp house; Fletch and Euly, and Mother, Father, and the baby living inside; our beds, the stove, the meat box sitting in strange corners. Did Euly and Fletch go to the Blackjack school? Had the baby learned to speak words? Had the heifer started giving milk?

“Do you reckon Green can walk by now?” I asked Grandma.

She looked at me gravely, seeing how homesick I was. “Why, child,” she said, “he’s bound to walk in time, bounden to rise up and find his own way. Gee-o, I’m punishing to try walking agin myself.”