“Oh, and it’s twenty-eight dollars a month,” said Margery. “Same wage as the rest of us.”

Sophia looked at her brother, then down at her lap. Finally she lifted her head.

“We’ll have to think about it.”

“Okay.”

Sophia pursed her lips. “You still as messy as you was?”

“Probably a little worse.”

Sophia stood and straightened her skirt. “Like I said. We’ll think about it.”

* * *

• • •

William saw her out. He insisted, raising himself laboriously from his chair while Sophia handed him his crutch. He winced with the effort of shuffling to the door, and Margery tried not to let on that she saw it. They stood at the door and looked out at the relative peace of the creek.

“You know they’re fixing to take a chunk out of the north side of the ridge?”

“What?”

“Big Cole told me. They’re going to blow six holes straight through it. They reckon there’s rich seams in there.”

“But that part of the mountain is occupied. There’s fourteen, fifteen families just down by the north side alone.”

“We know that and they know that. But you think that’s gonna stop them once they sniff paper money?”

“But—what’ll happen to the families?”

“Same thing that happens every time.” He rubbed his forehead. “Kentucky, huh? Most beautiful place on earth, and the most brutal. Sometimes I think God wanted to show us all His ways at once.”

William leaned against the doorframe, adjusting his wooden crutch under his armpit while Margery digested this.

“It’s good to see you, Miss Margery. You take care now.”

“You too, William. And tell your sister to come work at our library.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Huh! She’s like you. No man going to tell her what to do.”

She could hear him chuckling as he closed the screen door behind him.

SIX

   My mother didn’t hold with twenty-four-hour-old pies, except mince. She would get up an hour earlier in order to bake a pie before breakfast but she would not bake any kind of custard or fruit pie, even pumpkin, the day before it was to be used, and if she had my father wouldn’t have eaten it.

• DELLA T. LUTES, Farm Journal

In the first months after she had moved to Baileyville, Alice had almost enjoyed the weekly church dinners. Having a fourth or fifth person at their table seemed to lift the atmosphere in the somber house, and the food was mostly a cut above Annie’s usual greasy fare. Mr. Van Cleve tended to be on his best behavior, and Pastor McIntosh, their most frequent visitor, was essentially a kind man, if a little repetitive. The most enjoyable element of Kentucky society, she observed, was the endless stories: the misfortunes of families, gossip about neighbors—every anecdote served up beautifully formed and with a punch-line that would leave the table rocking with laughter. If there was more than one raconteur at the table it would swiftly become a competitive sport. But, more importantly, those animated tall tales left Alice to eat her food largely unobserved and unbothered.

Or, at least, they had.

“So when are you two young ’uns going to bless my old friend here with a grandchild or two then, huh?”

“That’s what I keep asking them.” Mr. Van Cleve pointed his knife at Bennett and then Alice. “A house isn’t a home without a babby running through it.”

Maybe when our bedroom isn’t so close to yours that I can hear you break wind, Alice responded silently, scooping mashed potato onto her plate. Maybe when I’m free to walk to the bathroom without covering myself to the ankles. Maybe when I don’t have to listen to this conversation at least twice a week.

Pastor McIntosh’s sister Pamela, visiting from Knoxville, observed, as someone invariably did, that her son had gotten his new wife with child on the very day of their wedding. “Nine months to the day the twins came. Can you believe that? Mind you, she has that house running like clockwork. You watch, she’ll wean those two and the day after she’ll be carrying again.”

“Aren’t you one of those packhorse librarians, Alice?” Pamela’s husband eyed the world suspiciously from under two bushy brows.

“I am indeed.”

“The girl’s gone from the house all day!” Mr. Van Cleve exclaimed. “Some evenings she gets back so tired she can barely keep her eyes open.”

“Strapping lad like you, Bennett. Young Alice there should be too tired to get on a horse in the first place!”

“She should be bow-legged like a cowboy, though!”

The two men roared with laughter. Alice forced a wan smile. She glanced at Bennett, who was steering black beans around his plate with intent focus. Then she looked at Annie, who was holding the sweet-potato dish and gazing at her with something that looked uncomfortably like satisfaction. Alice hardened her look until the other woman turned away.

“You got monthlies stains on your breeches,” Annie had observed, as she brought Alice a pile of folded laundry the previous evening. “I couldn’t get it all out so there’s still a small mark.” She had paused, and added, “Just like last month.”

Alice had bristled at the idea of the woman monitoring her “monthlies.” She had the sudden sensation of half the town discussing her apparent failure to fall pregnant. It couldn’t be Bennett’s fault, of course. Not their baseball champ. Not their golden boy.

“You know, my cousin—the one over at Berea—she couldn’t fall pregnant for love nor money. I swear her husband was at her like a dog. She went to one of the snake-handling churches—Pastor, I know you disapprove but hear me out. They put a Green Garter around her neck and she was with child the very next week. My cousin said the baby has eyes as gold as a copperhead’s. But then she always was the imaginative type.”

“My aunt Lola was the same. Her pastor had the whole congregation praying for God to fill her womb. Took them a year, but they got five children now.”

“Please don’t feel obliged to do the same,” said Alice.

“I think it’s all this riding the girl is doing. It’s no good for a woman to sit astride all day. Dr. Freeman says it jiggles up a lady’s insides.”

“Well, yes, I do believe I’ve read as much.”

Mr. Van Cleve picked up his saltshaker and waggled it between his fingers. “It’s like if you shake a jar of milk up too much, it turns sour. Curdles, if you like.”