‘Do you live in a shack?’ Jonathan said, climbing down to the ground. ‘Why do—’

‘Quiet, boy.’ Alvah led Jonathan to the door of the soddy.

When Alvah and Wify had arrived in Kansas years before, there was grass from one horizon to the next, no big trees, no rocks, no adobe, nothing to build a house with, only a few caves – and these already occupied. They’d built the sod hut themselves. Wify pulled the plow with a special device attached; Alvah sliced the surface from an entire acre of ground to make the hut. The walls were solid dirt bricks, weighing a hundred, two hundred pounds each, and heaved into place without tools or levers. The roof was cottonwood and more sod. Inside the hut, Alvah, Wify, the children, a pig, the mice, the bugs, the damp, the weeds that straggled from the ceiling: all lived together.

‘You live in a little square hill,’ Jonathan said, ‘with a little square door—’

‘Quiet!’

There was one tiny window: the room was dim even though it was still bright outside. Wify was an enormous, draped figure, bent over a kettle that hung above the coals in the fireplace. There was a cloud of steam. The figure turned, revealing its unbaked-dough of a face lit up by the red from the fire.

‘What a big lady!’ Jonathan cried and then clapped his hand over his mouth, remembering that he wasn’t supposed to talk.

‘This the boy?’ Wify said irritably.

She was even bigger face-on than from the rear; huge shoulders, huge breasts, huge hands. She maneuvered the great bones inside her body as though she were still straining at the yoke. She’d borne her children alone; she’d dug the graves for the stillborn herself. The vast shoulders shivered with resentment.

‘Don’t see no point in a boy,’ she said, turning back to her kettle. ‘Could have got a calf – or another pig—’ Her voice faded into a querulous mutter. Jonathan tightened his grasp on Alvah’s hand.

‘Let go,’ Alvah said.

In the middle of the room stood a large dry-goods box, turned upside down to make a table. Alvah seated himself on a crate next to the box, held a newspaper up toward the window and started to read. Old newspapers, rotting from damp and age, covered the walls and gave off a sour reek. A boy about Jonathan’s own age crept out from a corner of the room.

‘What’s he called?’ the boy said.

This was George Stoke, the senator-to-be himself, eyes aglitter as he flicked them over Jonathan, who was at once enchanted by what he saw. Childhood pictures of George show a plump, animated little boy with little round legs and little round eyes, shiny and black.

‘What’s he called?’ George asked again.

‘Jonathan Carrick,’ Alvah said.

George circled Jonathan, who held very still for the moment of judgment.

‘Carrick, Darrick, Farrick!’ George said at last. Then he poked Jonathan’s nose.

The most angelic of children sustain passions that would kill their elders; only physical weakness – though fortunately they’re also inept – keeps them from acting out what they feel. And George was not one of the most angelic. The blow was nothing, but Jonathan, after the wild-animal fashion of his kind, had caught a whiff of George’s soul. He turned and dashed toward the door.