“What if there weren’t no laws that said how you had to go about things?” he asked her.

“You talking about atonements?”

“Not just. What if,” he said and stood up. He rubbed his hands together and then put them on his hips. “What if instead of coming up with how many atonements to give, the residents thought of the reasons why they should forgive someone?”

“Arbuckle!”

“Just a question is all.” He paced back and forth as he did when he was onto something. “Ain’t nothing wrong with wanting to forgive someone.”

“Sure is when doing so undoes a law.” But the words felt strange rolling off her tongue.

Arbuckle stopped in front of her and grabbed her by the shoulders softly. She could see him grinding his teeth, working his jaw in a fit of restraint, but try as he would he could not contain such treacherous thoughts. “What’s to say the law’s the right thing?”

“The Deputies say is what.” She lifted up her hands and slowly took his off her shoulders, but she did not let go of them. She held them fast, desperately. What Arbuckle was saying wasn’t allowed; that much she understood. But it weren’t wrong, neither, and with that she knew not what to do.

“What’s to say they’re right?” he asked her, taking her hand and rubbing the skin between her thumb and forefinger. He pressed it softly, and she felt a pinch, a sting at her temple.

“You want to say they’re wrong?” she asked, pulling her hands away. “Get you skinned for sure.”

Arbuckle crossed his arms. He looked down at her from above, and she searched his eyes for the intention that she knew was inside. He couldn’t help himself no more than his father, no more than her mother or herself. It was in him and she knew it and it was all she could do to not let the anger burn her up. You could’ve steered him, Mama.

“Can’t skin us all,” he said.

5

That evening Lady Mae sat on the sofa and waited for her mother to return home from the depot. After Arbuckle had left, she’d put up the chickens; the storm was nearly upon them, and the muddy sky sagged thick with wet. The rains would be swift and dangerous, and they couldn’t afford to lose any more hens. Lady Mae closed up the coop, and as she did she thought of her mother’s meddling, of Arbuckle’s honesty, of the way her own hands felt in his. I ain’t no child no more, Mama.

Her mother did not often anger her. Her voice was honey, her firm hand cradling. Perhaps what Lady Mae felt was not anger at all, but in any case she aimed to say something when her mother came home. She thought suddenly of her mother’s dress, of what might be lurking in other pockets. She looked down at her own hands, curling her fingers one at a time inside of her palm; would she miss them if they were gone? When her mother saw what Lady Mae had found on the ground—the fingertip—she had told her daughter that some residents wished to keep what they’d lost. True, some took their amputations home with them in a small glass case or even a satchel; did it help them to still have the tips and toes near, to be able to glance at them now and then? Maybe those residents kept their parts in a jar or bucket, tucked away behind their medicine cabinet or in their cellar. Or maybe they tied them to a string and brought them out once a year on the anniversary of their atonement to remind themselves that they survived. Others tore out of the chair without thinking—her mother had said it were the toughest of the settlement that ran the fastest.