“I was just a little child during the War Between the States,” she said, “but I recollect a few things about it. Everbody was hungry back then, because the soldiers took everything. They was a whole family up Scary kilt by the Yankee men. Even the younguns. We was mostly Yankee sympathizers, but everbody said how terrible it was. Still they werent nothing done to stop it. Both sides shot men while they worked in their fields. Shot them dead in front of their families. Then they was Alec May, kilt because he wouldnt fight. Hit was terrible times, and folks was so mean to each other.” We rocked on the front porch and listened to the peepers. “Alec was an abolitionist,” she continued, “but he couldnt see killing. Said the rebels was barefoot boys like him. That’s why the Yankees shot him, left Jane with a baby to raise by herself.”

“My mama.”

“That’s right. Your mama. It was a hardship on Jane, but I cant say Alec done wrong. He done what he had to. Live by what you believe is right and you bring the world down on your head.”

I felt ashamed. “I shot at people,” I said. “That aint like Uncle Alec.”

“Aint like Carrie Bishop neither,” she said gently. Then she patted my knee. “When the world’s turned around, sometimes up looks like down. I dont recall much about Alec. I was just a youngun when he was kilt. But I heard enough of him to know that you’re Alec May’s granddaughter and he wouldnt mind to claim you.”

She hugged me. She smelled like woodsmoke from standing by the fireplace.

“Child, child, what will become of you? But you wont go back on your raising.”

I saw her then, walking fifty miles through the rain to reach the Homeplace after she left her husband, her hair hanging in wet clumps and her drenched skirts slapping her legs.

I joined Albion at the Mingo Hotel in Justice on the evening before the trial. Isom and Gladys stayed in the room across the hall. It was all Ermel’s idea. The Baldwin-Felts people and the coal operators took up two whole floors of the Carter Hotel on Main Street. He’d not have his boy arriving at the last minute, rumpled and tired from the train, while the coal operators strolled up the hill in newly pressed suits.

Albion had little to say until we were alone in our room. Then he pulled me down beside him on the green chintz bedspread.

“I missed you so much,” he said. “I been so worried. I knew if anything bad happened, Ben would git word to me. But still—”

“I’m fine. I had it easy. My arm gits a little sore is all. But you, you’re still yet so thin. Who’s doing your cooking for you?”

“I done some myself,” he said proudly. “And Annadel Justice fed me some.”

“You dont say. Well, you dont need me around.”