Beautiful men did not have lines at the corners of their eyes that reached clear down to their knees. Beautiful men did not have old-man ears that were fleshier than a young man’s ears. Beautiful men did not have joints that creaked in the mornings. The man in the mirror was not merely “older,” this man was ancient. Elderly, even. How did this happen? Life had killed the beautiful man and replaced him with an old man. Life did this to everyone, sooner or later.

He had once heard a preacher say that life was like a mountain railroad. The twists, the turns. It beat you up. You picked up different passengers along the way and dropped others off. And this was certainly true enough.

In the years he’d spent running from boll weevils, from dead cotton fields, from bill collectors, building roofs, building barns, working tobacco plantations, he’d picked up several passengers on life’s train.

He’d never wanted passengers. But that’s just how the trains worked. You didn’t get to choose who rode in the seats next to you. You were near them for better or worse, and if you were smart, you learned to like it. If you were really smart, you learned to love it.

Over the years he’d watched the children grow longer, leaner, and stronger. Pete was a man, almost as tall as Vern, skinny as a stick and shy. It seemed like just yesterday Pete had started shaving and his voice had dropped. All traces of youth had left Pete’s person. He was a square-jawed, big-shouldered, quiet man.

And Ruth. A woman. A young woman. But a woman nonetheless. She was stubborn, not easily broken, and her violet eyes had almost as much spirit in them as her wild hair. She was seventeen but did girlish things like splashing in nearby creeks, traipsing through mud, capturing frogs, and raising squirrels in shoe boxes. She worshipped Pete. Paul saw it in the way she looked at him.

Maturity had landed on all of them. Age was working on each person whether he wanted it or not. It made beautiful men turn ugly. And baby girls become striking. But none of the children had matured more than Reese. The baby fat in her face had left her, and she became a lady almost overnight. She cared more for her appearance than anyone else on the Warner farm. She was not vain, but she was closer to it than Ruth was.

Miss Warner had done well with Ruth and Reese. The girls had learned all sorts of feminine things. How to behave at supper tables, how to cross their ankles when seated, how to wear their hair for preaching. How to read, write, and work with numbers. How to set the table. How to behave around young men.