The mines cut down to two days’ work. Houses emptied. Lanterns bobbed along the road at night as loaded wagons moved out of Blackjack. Idle men sat on the storehouse steps watching the shifts go into the pit, and they were there when the miners came out again. Uncertainty hung like slag smoke over the camp. Father grew quiet. He was worried about his job, and about Mother. Mother was ill, and often abed. Her body had swollen until she could scarcely walk. She lay awake at night worrying over Grandma, for Uncle Jolly had written a letter saying she was sick. “Come for shore,” Uncle Jolly had said. “Could I go see Ma,” Mother kept saying, “hit would be a satisfaction.”

I went barefooted through the camp, going where I was of a mind. Neither Mother nor Father scolded me. Fletch’s hand was not yet healed and Father had commanded him to stay inside the yard. Euly kept indoors, cooking and bedmaking, and waiting upon Mother. The beds she made were lumpy as fodder-stacks; she used a waste of grease cooking. I tramped the camp over. I saw what there was to see. I sat among tipple timbers listening to thunder of coal shaken into gons, and to the dolesome groan of conveyors on rusty cogs. I knew at last where the herb doctor and the fortune-telling woman lived. Under certain houses game roosters were kept hidden. I knew where. I knew the faces of men who pitted them in the birch draws above the camp.

I walked alone. Boys glanced oddly at me who had neither marbles nor spinny-tops. I gathered tobacco tags along the road, and around the company store, trading and swapping—three Old North States for a Bloodhound, five Bloodhounds for a horse-headed Dan Patch. I did not go to Darb Sorrels’s to ride the blind mules for a long time, though I ached to go. Fletch was jealous and had Father tell me to wait. He questioned me at night in Father’s presence. On a day when I could wait no longer I gave him twenty-four Dan Patches. He vowed to keep my going a secret. He marked a cross upon the ground and spat upon it to swear.

I had in head going to Darb Sorrels’s in early afternoon, but Mother was concerned about Uncle Samp. He had not slept in his bed for two nights. “Go look inside the storehouse,” Mother told me, “and if he’s not there, ask Coonie Todd. Go to Coonie’s house and ask.” I went along the road to the store. Three men sitting on the steps leaned aside, letting me pass. I opened one of the double doors and spied in. Fruit Corbitt stood behind the counter wearing a coffee-sack apron, arms resting on empty shelves. Men sat about a cold stove. Three held roosters in their hands. They spat tobacco juice upon the brown belly of the stove, turning the fowls for all to see. Uncle Samp was not among them. I closed the door, and a voice came through it. “Hold on thar, boy.” I opened it again. A finger was pointed at me. “Boy, I got a thing to ask you.”