School was done for the year. I tried to read on my own to make up for what I had lost, but it was hard to concentrate. It was unsettling to have the men gone. I had no doubt that we women could take care of one another. But I missed their maleness. They were kin and a vital part of our kinship had been torn away.

A man passed through on his way to Letcher County. He had been down the river. He told us a man had fallen from the rafts on the Levisa and been killed. He heard the man was from Paine County, but he didn’t recall the name.

“Happened four days back,” he said.

“Nigh to Louisa. They went on to Catlettsburg,” he said.

“Probably werent one a yourn,” he said.

We shoved his food at him. He slept in the barn and left the next morning.

“He was likely mistaken,” said Aunt Jane. “Besides, they’s a heap of men in Paine County that run logs.”

Flora began to cry. She sat hunched forward so long that I wondered if a baby could be squashed inside of its mother.

Flora spied them first. “They’re a-coming!” she hollered.

We found her on the porch, clutching a post, her belly pressed against it. From a distance the men seemed to float over the bottom land like ghosts. They were too far away to tell who was who.

“Oh, lordy,” Flora prayed, “please let Ben be all right.”

They came on slowly.

“There’s Ben!” I cried. “I spy Ben!”

Flora pressed her hands to her cheeks.

“Who else, child?” Aunt Becka pleaded. “Your eyes is better than mine.”

“There’s Farrie Whitt, and Clarence. And there’s Moscoe and Amos Maynard. Vance McCoy. Lee Slone. And Miles! Miles has come back with them.”

“Where’s Orlando?” Aunt Jane asked.

Flora raised her head. “Where’s Daddy?”

We stood still for a moment. Aunt Becka staggered down the steps, almost fell.

“Where’s my brother?” she cried. “Where’s my little brother?”

Then Ben was with us, he said our daddy was dead. Flora and I clutched one another and wailed.

Aunt Jane, who knew what it was to lose husband and daughter, remained calm.

“Aint you brung back his body?” she asked.

“We had to bury him right there. We wasn’t near no place and he was all tore up. They was a blockade and he was throwed off and caught between two rafts. Hit was all we could do to git the corpse out of the river. We went on to Catlettsburg, sold the logs, and come on back here with Miles.”

Aunt Becka commenced to keening. “Orlando’s gone. Oh, Jesus, he’s gone, my poor little brother that I carried in my arms oncet. And all for a handful of silver.”