Lady Mae put the needle through the top layer of skin on Arbuckle’s scalp. He took a sharp breath in and held it as long as he could as she went back and forth with the needle and string, stitching him back together again. When she finished she dabbed it once again with antiseptic. “Keep them wounds clean.”

“I will,” he said.

“It’s getting late. We should turn in.”

She put her scissors and thread back in her kit and closed it up. She tucked it and the antiseptic under her arm, balled up the rag, and placed it in the burn bin next to the stove.

“Don’t reckon I’ll be able to sleep at all,” Arbuckle said.

“Me neither.”

“Then at least I’ll have company,” he said and stood. He put his arm gingerly around her small shoulders as if she would break should he pull her in too close.

That Deputy, Mama.

Now you see, my girl.

10

When she woke, she was glad it was Sunday—the only day the depot was closed—and that she might ignore for a moment the image of the Deputy on the scaffold the day before. She’d seen him—in her shack that night so long ago, in the deep black of her dreams—and she was sure of it. The man on the other end of the telephone, the voice thick as mud through the megaphone; it was him. He’d been there that night. She felt it deep inside, this knowing, as if it had been there all along just waiting for the chance to swallow her. A slow, hot rage gathered in her belly and seeped out of her there in the space between sleep and waking.

But what should I do, Mama?

Tread wisely now, my girl.

She brought her hand to her breast, pushed against the bone underneath her thin skin, and leaned into the discomfort. The sensation was familiar and was as it had always been, long before her mother burned and her childhood lay buried in ash.

She walked over to her dresser and dipped her fingers in the wash basin. The water was warm from the hot night but felt good still as she washed her face. She blotted her cheeks with an embroidered towel and, as she hung the towel on the hook, she caught a glimpse of her hands. They were young enough, and to a stranger’s eye looked nothing out of the ordinary. But Lady Mae knew that the dark corners of her nails were not from cleaning the coop or digging for potatoes. That Deputy on the scaffold—her own hands had seen as much blood as his, maybe more. They weren’t too different, she and him, and it burned like a lightning bolt gone straight through a deadened tree, like half of her was already scorched.

When she made her way into the living room, she saw Arbuckle’s cot was empty, its sheets pulled up neatly and her great-grandmother’s quilt folded and stacked on top of his pillow. The thick smell of griddlecakes came in from the kitchen where she heard him putting logs into the stove. She went to the doorway and watched as he stacked the wood with just enough tilt so that the fire could breathe. When he stepped back to examine his work, he stood rigidly with his arms grasped around opposite elbows, his strong shoulders flexed. The wood burned hot and fast, every drop of moisture sucked out of its flesh in the unending heat. It popped and crackled, and Arbuckle took up an iron with which to stoke the wood. The flames caught and leaped up the bark, and he closed the stove door.