I thought I should take Starla away from the naked man, but she was occupied, not looking, grinding baked beans into the floor of the shed with her fat, grimy palm. Kaylee moaned in her sleep. Jamey was off somewhere, smoking a second cigarette. She said she didn’t like the baby to see her smoke.

I stood watch near the window. I kept my hand in my pocket, on Dance’s knife.

Jake picked up Starla after the laundry had been hung. When he came shuffling up to the shed in his flip-flops, I looked to Jamey but she only folded her arms and watched his approach.

I felt sure he was coming for me.

But then Starla raised her hands in expectation. He picked her up like a duffel bag, swinging her over his shoulders, holding on to her with only one hand. Not enough, I thought. Not safe. She was squirming, crawling over his neck, but laughing. It was familiar to her, this game.

I never knew a man to be silly with children; no one was with me. My daddy left when I was too young, and Mama had found Lobo when I was already too old, too suspicious to be loved. Or loving. I had been wary of a stepdaddy, but we both kept our distance from each other. Besides, he wanted Mama, to spend time with her, to work alongside of her, to love her. I was a scrawny tadpole, a beanstalk. Runt. I was the extra that came after.

He had other things to teach me.

“Keep her warm,” Jamey called.

“Ain’t none of us warm,” Jake said, and carried the baby down the hill.

“Where’s he taking her?” I asked.

Jamey exhaled, bent, and swooped the clothespins Starla had been playing with into a pile, dumping them into the laundry basket. “Skateboard lessons.”

“She can barely walk.”

“I know. But that’s, like, the age he learned, so.” She straightened, rubbed her nose, which had turned pink in the cold. “It’s better if kids can hold their own, you know? Especially girls.”

We watched them reach the patch in front of the farmhouse, what passed for a yard with the tractor tire and the big TV. Jake produced a small plastic skateboard and balanced the child on it as he stood to the side. Holding her hands, he began to run.

I was afraid of what would happen at night.

Jamey said the night meant dinner, partying, music if there was enough juice in the generator, which there probably wasn’t. Maybe Jake or one of the other men would take the mic hooked up to the PA system and freestyle, until they tripped over the extension cord or hit their heads on an amp. That had happened before. There might be dancing, she said.