Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,3

to know that.”

“They’d have learned soon enough on their own,” Jacob said.

“They needed to be prepared, and I prepared them. They ain’t in a hobo camp or barefoot like Hartley and his clan. If they can’t be grateful for that, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

“There’s going to be better times,” Jacob said. “This depression can’t last forever, but the way you treated them will.”

“It’s lasted nine years,” Edna said. “And I see no sign of it letting up. The price we’re getting for corn and cabbage is the same. We’re still living on half of what we did before.”

She turned back to the quilt’s worn binding and no other words were spoken between them. After a while Edna put down her sewing and went to bed. Jacob soon followed. Edna tensed as he settled his body beside hers.

“I don’t want us to argue,” Jacob said, and laid his hand on her shoulder. She flinched from his touch, moved farther away.

“You think I’ve got no feelings,” Edna said, her face turned so she spoke at the wall. “Stingy and mean-hearted. But maybe if I hadn’t been we’d not have anything left.”

Despite his weariness, Jacob had trouble going to sleep. When he finally did, he dreamed of men hanging onto boxcars while other men beat them with sticks. Those beaten wore muddy brogans and overalls, and he knew they weren’t laid-off mill workers or coal miners but farmers like himself.

Jacob woke in the dark. The window was open and before he could fall back asleep he heard something from inside the henhouse. He pulled on his overalls and boots, then went out on the porch and lit a lantern. The sky was thick with stars and a wet moon lightened the ground, but the windowless henhouse was pitch dark. It had crossed his mind that if a yellow rat snake could eat an egg a copperhead or satinback could as well, and he wanted to see where he stepped. He went to the woodshed and got a hoe for the killing.

Jacob crossed the foot log and stepped up to the entrance. He held the lantern out and checked the nesting box. The bantam was in it, but no eggs lay under her. It took him a few moments to find the fishing line, leading toward the back corner like a single strand of a spider’s web. He readied the hoe in his hand and took a step inside. He held the lamp before him and saw Hartley’s daughter huddled in the corner, the line disappearing into her closed mouth.

She did not try to speak as he kneeled before her. Jacob set the hoe and lantern down and took out his pocketknife, then cut the line inches above where it disappeared between her lips. For a few moments he did nothing else.

“Let me see,” he said, and though she did not open her mouth she did not resist as his fingers did so. He found the hook’s barb sunk deep in her cheek and was relieved. He’d feared it would be in her tongue or, much worse, deep in her throat.

“We got to get that hook out,” Jacob told her, but still she said nothing. Her eyes did not widen in fear and he wondered if maybe she was in shock. The barb was too deep to wiggle free. He’d have to push it the rest of the way through.

“This is going to hurt, but just for a second,” he said, and let his index finger and thumb grip the hook where it began to curve. He worked deeper into the skin, his thumb and finger slickened by blood and saliva. The child whimpered. Finally the barb broke through. He wiggled the shank out, the line coming last like thread completing a stitch.

“It’s out now,” he told her.

For a few moments Jacob did not get up. He thought about what to do next. He could carry her back to Hartley’s shack and explain what happened, but he remembered the dog. He looked at her cheek and there was no tear, only a tiny hole that bled little more than a briar scratch would. He studied the hook for signs of rust. There didn’t seem to be, so at least he didn’t have to worry about the girl getting lockjaw. But it could still get infected.

“Stay here,” Jacob said and went to the woodshed. He found the bottle of turpentine and returned. He took his handkerchief and soaked it, then opened