Atlas never knew about his father’s atheism. He never read the diaries. He never understood what a puritan his father was, either: how fearful Jonathan was of anything that made inroads on his control. The idea of farming no longer had the Malloys’ money to back it up, but Jonathan was not going to let that stop him. There had to be a way. There was no co-operative movement in the United States at the time; we’ve always been backward in such things. But Jonathan had read a little about Robert Owen, and he knew something about the weavers of Lancashire, the people who founded the first English co-operative in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was very successful. Jonathan figured that what worked with a textile mill just might work with a farm.

‘It’s no joke, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I intend to farm.’

She studied his expression, then turned away. ‘So it’s going to be forty acres and a mule after all, is it? After all the talk? How can you set your sights so low?’

Jonathan looked down at his hands. He turned them palm up, palm down; it was a gesture he had come to without knowing why. ‘You don’t know me,’ he said softly. ‘I can go much lower than that. Twenty acres will do to start with. This is virgin land out here. It’ll take a lot of working.’

‘Up at four, porridge with sorghum—’ Her voice was abruptly shrill; little Rayner stopped babbling at once, chin atremble. ‘Out to milk, cows to pasture, hoe, plow, seed, reap. You’re a preacher: for the love of God, Johnny, preach. Cook, wash, dig, cut wood, draw water. Is this what you want for me? for him?’

‘Preacher preach,’ Rayner whimpered, fearful now, looking anxiously from Sarah to Jonathan and back again.

Jonathan sighed. ‘Nobody said it was going to be easy.’

‘Not enough rain,’ she said, ‘too much rain. If the weather isn’t perfect, the crops fail and nothing’s ever perfect.’

‘You exaggerate,’ he said.

When Helen died Jonathan had gone to the lawyer in Ellsworth who’d drawn up that queer contract between Josh and the Malloys. Josh was right. Nothing was left. The First National Bank of Maine owned it all. Jonathan had managed to cajole him onto the train to Washington; they’d traveled together in silence for more than two thousand miles. Then in the middle of Utah, in a featureless desert, the train had stopped for water. Josh had gone for a walk and never come back.

‘Squirrels and rats and birds,’ Sarah cried, ‘cinch bugs, bot flies, termites, mosquitoes.’ Rayner hugged himself to her and wailed. ‘The banker takes a cut. Transporters take a cut. Commodity speculators take a cut. Wholesaler in Chicago, broker in Boston, retailer in New York—’

‘I hadn’t realized you were so knowledgeable,’ Jonathan interrupted.

‘Johnny, please, please, please don’t do this to me.’

‘You’re frightening that baby.’

Rayner clung to her like a koala bear to a tree trunk. She looked at Jonathan’s implacable face, at the anger that never left it, and her shoulders slumped in defeat; tears started down her cheeks.