“I didn’t say that,” Ben said. “You had a right to be riled. But they aint no reason to be all by yourself because of it. You’re like kin now. Come on back and set with us.”

Flora smiled at our return and indicated we were to sit beside her. Most of the corn was shucked and Farrie Whitt told a haint story around the bonfire. We ate popcorn, and Aunt Jane brought down taffy that the women had pulled from the new molasses. I looked around the circle at the smooth faces glowing in the firelight. Then I thought, what agony to truly be cut off from them.

We stayed past midnight. Aunt Jane, old and tired, took Albion and me to the wagon long before, and snuggled in the back with us beneath piles of quilts. Albion and I did not sleep. We lay side by side, our faces so close that I could see the whites of his eyes even in the dark.

“How did you lose your homeplace?”

“The railroad took it.”

“How?”

“They just took it.”

I had never heard of such a thing, but knew Albion was not one to lie.

“How can that be?”

“They wasnt nobody to stop them. Now I aint got no place. Aint no place to be buried when I die. Just be out on the mountain somewheres, like Momma. Wont nobody know where I am.”

“Why dont you stay here?”

“My daddy wouldnt stay. He vows to go back to West Virginia some day and settle. But he aint got enough money yet.”

“Where will yall go when he comes back?”

“We go down toward Georgia in the winter. Hit’s a bit warmer.”

It hurt me to think of him with only his father, hungry and cold, most likely.

“Will you come back?”

“I hope so. I’ll come back and marry you when I’m bigger. And I’ll git me some land, maybe here in Kentucky.”

“And we’ll build us a house out of wood with a big porch, and paint it white.”

“And have six younguns.”

“All right. Can I have another kiss?”

He kissed me lightly on the mouth and we fell asleep.

The wagon jolted us awake when we started back down Scary. The sky was punched full of stars. We turned on our backs and all of heaven stretched out over us. The mountaintops hung upside down; as the wagon dipped and swayed they reached out and grabbed the full moon, then let it pop up again, like a fish teasing a cork bob.

Albion’s father came the next week and took him away. I followed their wagon for a time as it trundled up Grapevine toward the ridge that led to the Levisa and West Virginia. Albion was pale and quiet.

“Come on go with us, girl,” Thomas Freeman said jovially.