After she died, I took armloads of spar grass and cockscombs to scatter on her grave. Burying grounds, too, would be places to receive the Holy Ghost, places where God danced with the spirits of the departed while they awaited the great raising day. At the cemetery, my people whirled around me, all the Bishops and Mays and Thornsberrys, baby Honakers, and even Daddy, come from afar and dancing slow, reluctant.

I settled back into the rhythms of the Homeplace. Miles, uneasy and quiet, had come home for Aunt Jane’s funeral. We had little to say to each other. He returned the next year with a bride named Alice Collins, plump and curly-haired, the daughter of the bank president in Justice. She was not impressed with the Homeplace and I knew we wouldn’t see much of them. Then I was sorry for Miles, even though he was married. I thought he would lose his strength, like Samson shorn of his hair. But I would be as tough as Aunt Jane.

Ben subscribed to the Courier-Journal and it brought news of the rest of the world. I read of the strike violence in Colorado and fretted over Rondal, but an inner voice told me he was still alive. The war broke out overseas and we shook our heads and wondered at the reports of it. I nursed sick people all up Scary and Grapevine, and as far away as Henryclay, and delivered babies. At night we talked, told stories to the children, Jane and baby Luke, and turned the logs on the fireplace.

Then Albion Freeman returned.

He walked the eight miles from Kingdom Come, above Henryclay, where he lived. He had just moved up from Knott County to preach at a Hardshell Baptist church and to farm a piece of land near the head of the creek that didn’t seem to belong to anyone.

“What was you doing in Knott County?” Ben asked.

“I was preaching there, too. Only some of them didnt like the word I was bringing. I felt a call to come up this way anyhow. They aint no place I was ever happier than here in Paine County. I wanted to see yall again.”

They invited him to spend the night and we sat around the table after supper. I let the others ask the questions. I was a little frightened of him. He had been a slender, sharp-faced boy. He was still lanky but he had grown tall, over six feet, with a black stubble of beard, wiry hair that trailed over the collar of his shirt, and a long nose. His fingers were large and so gnarled they looked like he dug a corn patch with his bare hands. He kept looking at me, quickly, shyly. I studied my coffee cup.

“You’re awful quiet, Carrie,” Ben said once, and I wanted to smack him.

“I’m listening,” I said.