Picking up the big suitcase she had at the ready, she walked past him out the door and straight to his cabin. In it she put his few remaining possessions—the books, the old blanket, even the shot glass. The wooden cross wouldn’t fit, so she just carried it. She padlocked the cabin as she left.

When she returned, he was slumped in the same place and she put the suitcase and the cross beside him. She took a bundle of cash out of the safe. Then she went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of milk and the food she had prepared for him earlier, which was in a paper bag. She put the food and money in front of him.

Sitting at the table again, she said, “I’ve filled the car with gas.” She pointed at the money. “That there’s two thousand dollars, half my savings. This place is mine. It’s in my name, and we aren’t married. I’m giving you the car. The title’s in the glove compartment. Now, listen, I don’t care where you go. The only thing I want is not to see you or hear from you ever again. Do you understand?”

Magnus was breathing hard, a crazed grimace on his face.

She went to bed. It began to rain. She couldn’t sleep and kept listening for him downstairs. Finally she heard the floor creaking and a little while later the banging of the screen door. Perhaps an hour after that, she heard the car start up and drive off. She couldn’t bring herself to go down until morning. He had taken his cross and suitcase, as well as the money and the food. He had also taken all the silver her grandmother had left her and her grandfather’s gold pocket watch and Civil War saber. In fact, he had taken everything of any value. She didn’t care. He was gone.

PISGAH 1952

                                                      PISGAH
1952

IT WAS CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT AND THE MEN, CROWDED into Goldwin’s barbershop, had been drinking for a few hours. Laurel McFarlane, the itinerant so-called man of the woods accused of raping Otto’s daughter, Shannon, had been acquitted that afternoon after a trial that had lasted less than two days.

“Not fucking guilty?” Otto shouted. “Nigger raped my girl.”

“Nigger?” Siggy said.

Finn shook his head. “Sure, the gombeen looked like he wouldn’t say boo to a goose, all cleaned up like that.”

“Satan shifts his shape,” Magnus announced dramatically, his eye on the fifth of bourbon Otto kept leaving unguarded in his agitation.

Goldwin nodded. “Would’ve looked like a Sunday school teacher, weren’t for those crazy teeth of his.”

“Didn’t help none she didn’t see who did it,” Siggy said.