Adams left them talking in the doorway and walked to the larger of the two bedrooms. On the bed was a quilt he recognized. His heart raced. The door closed after Joe and the Mobbleys and the front gate clicked. Emma walked past him into the bedroom and knelt down to draw extra quilts from a box under the double bed. He followed her and crouched beside her. He put an arm around her waist. It felt rounder than he had remembered it. Her flesh was soft and pliable.

“Emma——”

She did not answer. Her eyes focused without attention on the box of quilts.

“No need to be so rabbity with me, Honey,” he said.

She dropped a quilt on the floor, handling it absently.

“I been thinking the past hour,” he said, “about sleeping with you.”

She said desperately, “You got the right. The law gives you the right.”

He stood up.

“I hate you should talk about the law for such as that.” He pondered, “I reckon I feel strange to you.”

She straightened, standing with her back to the wall, the quilt bundled in front of her. Her mouth quivered. Her eyes were like a mare’s in panic. He looked out into the kitchen. The two girls were putting away the last of the dishes. The four-year-old boy lay curled on the floor in front of the stove, sleeping like a puppy. Adams stared at him. A sick fear paralyzed him.

“Emma—” He seemed to hear his own voice coming from a great distance. “Who’s the little feller?” The woman did not speak. He faltered, “I figured he come with Mobbleys——”

The older girl bent protectively over the child, arranging his clothes.

The younger girl called shrilly, “He’s ours.”

His head thickened. He shook it to lighten the weight. His mouth jumped at one corner. He turned toward the woman. She stood with the back of her head pressed hard against the wall, rolling it from side to side. Her eyes were closed. The quilt slid from her arms and she lifted one hand and crammed it against her mouth. She opened her eyes and looked at him.

She cried out in a loud voice, “I had to have help on the place. A woman can’t farm it alone. The fences was near about rotted to the ground.”

He opened and closed his fingers. Fire moved in tongues across his numbness, as though life and death competed for his body.

The woman whimpered, “Nobody didn’t never figure on no pardon.”

The wind in the chinaberry was blowing from an alien world and passing to another. The room lay inside it, lost in stillness. The fire died away through his limbs and the numbness possessed him. He moved to the door of the smaller bedroom.

“Where must I sleep?” he asked.

“I just don’t know——”

He looked from one bedroom toward the other.