He carried me out. The women had heard the whistle blow and gathered at the tipple to learn who was killed. Mommy was there. She came forward, her face wild.

“What are you doing down there?” She shook me. “I done lost you. Coal mine will git you sure. You’re bound to git kilt. I seen it coming.”

She kept shaking me. I tried to cry out for her to stop, but no words would come. Daddy carried me home, undressed me, bathed me and sat me before the stove. He paced up and down.

“It happens,” he said. “Hit’s one of them things. Joe’s number was up, that’s all. When it comes, you cant stop it, no matter where you are.”

I opened my mouth to speak but still I could not. I was mute for three days. My tongue felt like it had swelled to twice its normal size, and it pained me to swallow. Talcott crept to where I sat beside the stove, plucked at my sleeve.

“Why cant you talk none, Rondal?”

I shook my head and concentrated on breathing, afraid that if I didn’t think about it, I would stop.

C.J. heard what happened and came to see us.

“I’m setting up my store next month,” he said to Daddy. “Drug store. Let the boy come to me. He can go to school, work the store in the afternoons, send the money back to you.”

“What do you think, Vernie?” Daddy asked.

“I dont care,” Mommy said in a flat voice.

“He’s still yet my boy,” Daddy said. “He dont want to leave home so young. Besides, I need his help. He cant make as much in no store.”

“Twenty-five cent a day,” said C.J. “Hit’s something anyhow. Ask him. Ask him what he wants to do.”

“He cant talk,” Mommy said.

“Ah-h,” I said. “Ah-”

They all looked at me.

“Ifn that boy leaves,” said Daddy, “I’ll take Talcott in. Hit comforts me to have my boys around.”

C.J. walked to the door. “You got to talk, Rondal. You got to say what you’re going to do. Hit’s your choice.”

I motioned for a pencil to write with.

“No,” C.J. said. “You got to say it.”

So I tongued the words as though speaking a new and exotic language.

“C.J.” I said. “C.J. Take me.”

Talcott ran away from home the day after I left. Daddy found him below Felco and wore him out with his strap.

Three

CARRIE BISHOP

YOU HAVE SEEN OLD PHOTOGRAPHS, BROWN AND SWEET-LOOKING, as though dipped in light molasses. My memories of the Homeplace in Kentucky are like that. Sweet, bittersweet.