“Go git me my rations, woman,” he told her. He turned her away from the field. “Git!” He took his hands from her shoulders. “Now shame to me. My hands has smuttied your clean dress.”

“Soap an’ water’s plentiful.”

His eyes followed her across the clearing and into the house.

The March night was chilly. When supper was eaten, he piled the fireplace with blocks of magnolia. The cream-colored wood gave out a sweet odor, like a mild thin spice. As the fire dulled, he threw on pine. He took off his high boots and stretched his bare sandy toes to the fire.

“Wisht I’d takened my boots off in the dark. Look at them feet. Now I got to git up an’ wash ’em afore I goes to bed.”

From the kitchen Drenna brought him a basin of warm water and a towel of flour sacking.

“Whooey, ain’t that fine!”

He dabbled luxuriously, drying his feet with the warm towel.

“Now you been a-waitin’ on me, leave me do somethin’ for you. Leave me play for you.”

They both laughed. His playing was limited to two tunes on the mouth-organ.

“I’ll blow ‘The Tall Pine Tree.’ ”

She sat on a three-legged stool by the fireplace, her smooth head resting against the gray clay, her eyes closed. Lige played his tunes over and over, patting his bare right foot on the pine floor. The children stirred in their low bed, sighing in deep sleep. The magnolia burned into soft gray checks. Drenna nodded.

“Go on to bed, Sugar. I’ll set up a whiles. I’ve wore you out, plantin’ them beans. But Drenna—I got no question. We’ll make us a crop, shore as dogs runs rabbits.”

“Shore will,” she agreed sleepily.

He sat by the fire an hour after she had gone, blowing softly into the harmonica, patting his foot.

Lige saved his beans two weeks later by a scanty margin. He had planted dangerously early, and as the crooks came through, it was plain that heavy frost was moving in. Two nights in succession were increasingly colder. All the beans in the region were slightly nipped. The third night would bring real damage. A smudge would be useless over the young juicy plants.

In the crisp morning he said to Drenna, “Ain’t a reason in the world why I cain’t cover them leetle bean plants with dirt today.”

But when he drove the mule and cultivator between the rows, the earth he turned did not quite cover them.

Drenna, come out to watch him, said, “Kin do it by hand, Lige.”

“Six acres?”

“Well, what we kin git covered is better’n nothin’.”