Paul had not cared for tobacco work when he first arrived. This work wasn’t at all like cotton picking, peanut picking, plowing, timber framing, roofing, or dog training. Tobacco work was careful work, slow moving and downright boring. But somehow he’d changed the way he felt about it. He’d come to love the easy rhythms.

Maybe it was because he was getting older and tired. Maybe it was because he was slowing down. After six years of tobacco, he’d grown used to the light pace of work.

The best part of the job was the housing—if you could call it that. It was a crude cabin made of rotting clapboards, a dirt floor, a leaky tin roof, a fireplace made of mud and rock. There were dozens just like it. Crooked structures with cockeyed gables and chickens roaming dirt yards. Eulah and the girls slept inside. Paul, Vern, and Pete slept in a lean-to where the chickens often gathered and left little gifts on their pillows if they forgot to cover them with tarps.

But mornings brought simple blessings. Coffee over a campfire. A sunrise. Paul’s homemade biscuits from a sack of flour. And children. The children had gotten older since they’d first come to the Pettigrew farm. They were taller, leaner, and just when Paul thought they couldn’t get any more beautiful, they proved him wrong.

Eulah’s children had become the best part of Paul’s life. So had Ruth. Eulah kept to herself and could go full days without saying much. With each year, the children grew into miniature adults. They acted like it too. Ruth had found her favorite phrase: “I know.” She said it all the time, and it made Paul smile every time the self-assured six-year-old reminded him that she “knew” something.

Paul could practically write her future. She would grow into a confident girl who didn’t need anything from anybody. And this made him proud of her, even as he hoped he’d live to see that version of her.

But he might not. People died every day from little things. It was never the big things that got you. It was always the little things that swept you from this planet. But it didn’t concern him, for his purpose in life was clear. These children had become his purpose. And until he’d met them, he only wandered through life with Louisville and Vern. There was never a reason for doing anything. Now he had more reason than he could stand.