It wasn’t my first quick exit from this house. I’d been working with Luke a month when I asked to stay overnight. We were in chairs we’d brought out to the cabin’s porch, not so much sitting as sprawling, our bodies, especially arms, succumbing to gravity after a day muscling rapids and sluices. A minute passed before Luke spoke.

“You sure you want to do that?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’re going to hurt your father bad, and he’s already had a hard enough year with your mother dying.”

Luke’s words surprised me.

“You’re not scared of him, are you?” I asked.

“No,” Luke said, “but this is going to change things between you two.”

I laughed. “Well, maybe then it will help, because it can’t get any worse. If something changes between us, it can only be for the better.”

My birthday had been two days earlier, and I reminded Luke of this fact.

“I’m twenty-one,” I said. “I make my own choices now.”

So that night Luke did not drive me down Damascus Church Road to my father’s house. I did not sleep well, perhaps because I wasn’t used to sharing a bed, perhaps because my resolve was weakening. I finally got up and checked Luke’s watch. Three A.M. It wasn’t too late. I could wake Luke and have him drive me home. Daddy would have some words for me about coming in so late, but I would be there before daybreak, and that would make all the difference. To him it would be a sign of deference, an acknowledgment of where my home was.

But I hadn’t done that. Instead, I turned on the lamp and read until my eyes blurred. Only then did I sleep. When I woke, light streaked through the cabin’s back window and someone was knocking on the front door.

“It’s my father,” I told Luke.

Luke sat on the side of the bed and reached for a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

I grabbed his forearm. “Go on and answer the door.”

Luke stared at me, waiting for some explanation.

“Don’t put your clothes on.”

“I’m not doing that,” Luke said, jerking his arm free. He put on the shorts and shirt, then walked across the gray, rough boards and opened the door. Daddy stared at Luke, then past him to where I lay in the bed.

“I’ve packed up your things and they’re on the front porch,” he said. The words were spoken softly, which was more unsettling than the anger and self-righteousness I’d expected.

Then Daddy looked at Luke, his voice still low but the inflection sharp as a scythe blade.

“If I thought it to make any matter of difference, I’d beat the hell out of your worthless ass.”