“I better be fixin’ to clean up whilst he’s quiet-like.”

She was filled with the need of putting the place in order. She brushed the rough pine floor with a broom-grass sweep. The dirt was largely loose sand which she brushed into the fireplace. She picked up old Jo’s wide-brimmed black felt Sunday hat from the floor and hung it on a wooden peg on the back of the door. A bunch of yellow daisies from the flatwoods was dead in a coffee can on the bare deal table. She threw them in the fireplace and poured the fetid water on the tin cans of plants on the two window-sills. They were wild ferns and jasmine vines. The rain was beating down too fiercely to set them out in it. Her porch plants in lard pails were being whipped to pieces. Two of them had been knocked over and rolled toward the wall of the cabin, where they thumped and banged. She moved Jo’s twelve-gauge shotgun to a corner by the clay fireplace. There was nothing more in the room to put in order. There was indeed nothing more there.

Florry made a rush back to the kitchen. The gale lifted her across the breezeway as though great hands lay under her armpits. Moved by an obscure instinct, she overhauled her wardrobe. She patched the brown calico dress and took a few stitches in her other shift and drawers. The cockroaches had been at her ancient coat. She shook it out and brushed off the summer’s white mould.

The young Cracker arrived in the lull of the gale. Like a bird-dog guided by scent, he came direct to the gaping rear door, where he stood hesitant. The rain washed through him from shirt to shoes. He pushed the dripping brown hair back from his eyes.

“I mean, hit’s a toad-strangler of a rain,” he proffered.

“I mean!” she agreed.

“Reckon your daddy’ll keer, me a-follerin’ this-a-way?”

“Reckon he mought.” She looked him fearlessly in the face. “Hit don’t worry me none. You couldn’t git you no wetter,” she said, “iffen you’ll go yonder to the wood-pile and fetch me some lighter’d and a handful o’ them turpentine chips, I kin make you a fire to dry you out a leetle.”

“I shore will do that thing.”

He dragged back the door and propped it against the opening. The wet wood steamed and popped in the iron stove. Sport stretched luxuriously closer, groaned in his sleep. The smell of the man, the smell of his garments, filled the room in rich waves. Florry sat by him on the pallet.

“Them ol’ winds didn’t waste no time a-comin’,” he said.

“Seems like us mought o’ brought ’em in, like, a-talkin’ of ’em.”

He shook his head.

“They was ready to come. I seed the signs.”

She nodded.

“I kin feel them things a-comin’, a long ways. I could kind o’ feel you comin’,” she added gravely.

“I studied some you mought be proud to see me.”