Euly came and stood beside me, watching, sleep still in her face. Sid Pindler and Ab Stevall went by. They craned necks at our house as they passed. Three boys ran the road shouting. “Look,” Euly said. “Yonder comes the fortune-telling woman.” I picked her from the others. She came hobbling, her uncombed hair tucked beneath a coat collar; she was old, old, and the seams of her face were like gullied earth. Euly drew back, speaking under her breath. “Now, never do I want my fortune told, a-knowing everything coming, a-knowing when I’m going to die.”

I shook, though not from cold. My teeth struck together. “I wouldn’t want a ballad writ about folks gitting killed in the mines neither,” I said. “I wouldn’t now.”

The sun-ball rose, yellow and heatless. The burning slag heap near the tipple wound its smoke straight as a pole into the sky. The chill drove us indoors, and we looked over the camp from our kitchen window, seeing the chimney pots were cold, the people all gone to the driftmouth. I begged to go. I cried a speck, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. “Wait,” she said. “Your father said he’d send word.” And while we waited she brought a cushaw from the back porch, and began to peel away the mellow skin. “Three pies I’m going to make,” she said. “Harl and Tibb’U be starved when they get back.”

Euly’s chin quivered. “Never a bite they’ll eat,” she said mournfully. “Their mouths shet for good, their eyes with pennies atop.” She crossed the room, and I knew suddenly where she was going. She went out of the kitchen. I heard the clock door snap. I stood by the window, as quiet as a deer mouse, scarcely drawing breath. She came back looking hard at me, knowing. She whispered to Fletch and they both looked, eyes round with accusation.

When the cushaws were boiling Mother got a bag of cracklings. She crisped a handful of rinds in the stove. “Six pones o’ fatty bread I’m going to make,” she said. “Samp and your father and all the other fellers digging will be hungry. Nary a bite they’ve had this living day.” She started a pot of shucky beans cooking; she opened a jar of wild plum pickles.

A granny woman came down from the driftmouth. We saw her through the window, her breath blowing a fog. We hurried into the yard to stop her at our gate. “What have they larnt?” Mother asked.

The granny woman cleared her throat. “Nothing for shore,” she said. Her voice was thin like a fowl’s. “There’s a chug o’ rock fell down, but no sound beyond. Feller says he seed them go in the mine last night. That’s all they know—jist a feller says. Oh, never’d I trust a man’s sight Saturday after dark.”