Doctor Toussaint Booker took me on and paid two dollars a day, a fortune. I studied the frayed cuffs of his one suit and wondered if he could afford it, but I never asked him about it. We were no longer in the destitute class, but could now be considered fortunate. After I went to work we ate meat four days a week, enjoyed fatback in our beans, and Albion set aside fifty cents each day to give to miners with sick children. I looked back with a certain pride on the six months we lived on Albion’s seventy-five cents a day. I had accounted for every single penny and every piece of scrip, and spent nary a one without thinking of ten things it might be used for and pledging to do without the nine least important. Yes, there was a pride in it now that we were a bit better off. Only those who can afford it take pride in such things, and only when looking back on them.

I went to Doctor Booker with many doubts, I am ashamed to say. I suppose that at first I looked on him with the same superiority with which the Ohio doctor had plagued me. I soon got over that. Doctor Booker was the best doctor I had ever worked with, not only because of his knowledge but because of his kindness toward his patients.

Doctor Booker knew Rondal, as did his friend C.J. Marcum, the mayor. They talked about him every time Mr. Marcum visited the office, and I listened avidly. After a time I let it be known that Rondal was an acquaintance of mine. They took it as a sign of kinship and gladly included me in their conversations. When Rondal’s name was mentioned I paused at my work, and always asked questions so they would talk a little longer. I thought no woman on earth knew as much about Rondal Lloyd as I did. But the knowledge gave me shame as well as pleasure, for I was a married woman and I loved my husband.

Albion didn’t sleep well in August. It wasn’t just the heat. It was the gas.

“The mine buzzed today,” he complained. “Hit was like little bugs running around inside my ears.”

One night he came home with the sleeve burned off his shirt and his arm blistered. I smeared grease on it.

“I stuck my lamp into the hole,” he said. “The flame run right up my arm.”

I daubed a wet cloth at his eyebrows, which were mostly gone.

“Yall got to stop work,” I said. “Cant they see how dangerous it is?”

“They wouldnt pay us ifn we stopped work. They say hit’s natural this time of year to have a gassy mine.”

“Some mines blow,” I argued.

“Hit’s a chance. They take it.”