Miles turned back to me. “Sis, we got to send for an undertaker. I’ll help you take him back to the Homeplace.”

He had his arms around me, pinned me to his chest. The smell of him was familiar, like sweet mown hay in the summer. Then I cried, with great racking sobs so that I couldn’t breathe. I clung to him, terrified, struggled for breath while my throat closed as though I were being strangled. I heard talk of a doctor and I felt a stinging on my arm.

We buried Albion as close to Alec May as we could. Miles stayed two days, then packed to return to Justice.

“You aren’t going back to those tents?” he asked me. “I’m not sure it’s safe for you. This was all a message, you know, that they won’t be challenged anymore.”

“Albion wanted me here,” I said. “And I heard tell the union has sent another nurse.”

“Good. There isn’t any more you can do. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. Coal is here to stay and the sooner folks cooperate, the sooner we’ll get back to normal.”

He carried his suitcase to the wagon where Ben waited. Flora and Aunt Becka followed him, hugged him. I stayed on the porch.

“Carrie,” he said.

“Quit that job, Miles. They’s other things you can do.”

“Carrie, I’ve got two children now. I’ve got a good future with the company. They’re not a bad company, not like some of the others. I can’t just throw everything away. If the union will just quit pushing, things will be all right. I’ll try to get to the bottom of all this. Those men murdered Albion and they ought to be punished. I promise I’ll look into it, even though I won’t be too popular for it. I promise.”

I went into the house. Flora followed me into the bedroom. “He’s your brother. Try to forgive him.”

I turned on her. “Goddamn you! You sound like Albion! How can I forgive somebody that aint sorry?”

She turned pale and fled. I threw myself across the bed and lay there until I heard the wagon rattle off into the distance.

Miles wrote me from Vulcan to say that no one had been arrested for the shootings. He’d had no luck asking questions and made a few people angry. The state police were gone and hundreds of Baldwin-Felts guards roamed the hollers. Even he was afraid to say anything more. The union must see that it was hopeless, he said, they must let things be or the guards would remain and there would never be peace.

No one wrote to me from Annadel, and I was left to imagine how Gladys must grieve, how Ermel would be old and broken, how hungry they all must be.