Neither of us screamed. Ben just whimpered and then not even that while I didn’t make a sound because it was like watching a movie, no more real than that because Ben’s ruined face couldn’t be real. The room tilted and a wave of blackness rushed in. When the floor leveled again and the room lightened, Ben and I were holding on to each other in the kitchen corner, as if the beans spilled on the floor could still hurt us. Ben’s pain was dimmed by shock, but my arm and leg now burned as though I was on fire, a fire that spread to cover my whole body, invisible flames that never quit burning. “The wicked are their own wick” was how Reverend Tilson described hell the morning he lit a candle in church and had us pass it around as he preached. That was exactly what I felt, what I saw when I closed my eyes—a candlewick inside an unquenchable flame. If older or in less pain I might have been able to clear my head enough to telephone Uncle Mark or Billy’s parents. But that was beyond me. All I could do was watch the clock on the stove, because the red second hand proved that time still moved and that meant Daddy had to come back and Ben and I wouldn’t be huddled in that corner forever. But it was forever. Daddy had been talking with Lou Henson and forgotten about us being alone. I counted out loud each time the second hand passed the twelve, telling myself that before the hand reached that twelve again Daddy would be back. I had reached twenty-seven before I heard Daddy’s truck.

“What kind of mess have you made, girl?” Daddy said, when he saw the spilled beans and Ben and me huddled in the corner. Saying those words to me as he stared at the beans and the pot, not really seeing us until Ben heard Daddy’s voice and turned his face and Daddy saw. Then a few more moments or minutes lost because we were no longer in the house but in the truck and Ben not making a sound, so quiet I believed he was dying. Each time the road curved we slid back and forth across the front seat and the pain leaped up and covered my arm and leg whenever I bumped against Ben or the door. All the while thinking, My brother is dying, and finally saying it out loud, and Daddy saying, “You shush now,” and not saying anything else as he jerked the steering wheel with one hand and shifted gears with the other. As we swung through those curves the dropoffs fell away below us for what seemed miles, and I thought between surges of pain that we were going to fall into the sky and never stop falling.