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quick by the sight of Pru Hartley, bent beneath a load of firewood, walking up the road.
    “Mornin’, Pru,” I said without enthusiasm, hoping she wouldn’t stop to talk. She did. Lowering her load, she looked at me in that sidelong way she had, making me wish I’d slipped into the springhouse unnoticed.
    “Mornin’, Ann. How’s Jesse? I hear tell he’s ailin’.”
    “Getting better now, but it might be catching. Better stay back.”
    “Uh huh.” She stood beside the load of wood, holding her back in a peculiar way. Even under her heavy cloak, I could tell she was with child.
    “Pru, are you expecting another baby?”
    “Looks like it, don’t it?”
    “Shouldn’t someone else be toting that wood for you?”
    “Who would you suggest? One of my brothers? My Pa? Ain’t likely.” She bent down to rearrange the wood. “House is cold. Pa’s drunk. Brothers is gone—sleepin’ wherever they can. No one to do fer ‘em but me.”
    It occurred to me to give her a gentle lecture on the fruits of the choices she’d made, but I decided against it. She wouldn’t listen anyway.
    “You go on home. I’ll send Nathaniel down with a load of wood this afternoon.”
    She brightened. “Now, that’s right neighborly of you. I sure could use the help.” Then, true to her nature, she added, “Not bein’ rich, like you.”
    My budding compassion faded and I stepped into the spring house as Pru lifted her burden and set out for home.
    The Hartleys were part of the landscape of our lives. Rad was a ‘good for nothing’, as Papa said, and he’d sired ten more like himself. His wife had been pretty once, according to Aunt Alice Grainger, but ten children, though they hadn’t killed her, had worn her down. She faded away so gradually, died so quietly, folks hardly noticed, five years ago. Rad went on as before, bingeing and recovering, bingeing and recovering.
    The three oldest boys had places of their own, if you could call them that. Smith, the oldest, lived with his wife’s folks down by the millpond. Weaver survived doing odd jobs and taking care of the Friends Cemetery. He lived in a shack at the edge of the graveyard with his wife and half a houseful of young ones. Even ‘Fallen Away’ Quakers were taken care of by the Friends. Miller Hartley came as close as any of them to being of some account. He boarded with Franklin Adams, working on their farm, and, some said, fixing to marry into the family as soon as Frank’s oldest daughter, Eve, was ripe. The two youngest boys, Cooper and Sawyer, still lived at home and worked out—whatever odd jobs came their way and didn’t disturb their rest.
    Pru was the youngest; all four of her older sisters were married and gone. Truth, Honesty, Faith and Charity were scattered about the county, producing babies at an alarming rate, giving whole communities pause about being overrun with ‘Hartleys’, as the children were known, whatever their last names happened to be.
    I watched Pru’s progress down over the hill with a mixture of pity and discomfort. There was no changing some people, but it was still hard to understand how they could let themselves get so low. I turned back up the path to the house.
    Ï
     
    “What is this sickness? How did you get it?” I asked Jesse when he was well enough to make any sense.
    “In the last station, the whole family was down with it. They thought to get the Negro out before he caught it, and he seemed all right when we left, but he started to cough almost as soon as we were on the road,” Jesse explained.
    “I got there early in the afternoon the day before, so I’d look like a visitor, but some slave catchers were seen in the neighborhood, so I stayed another day. I was afraid of getting sick but more afraid of the slave catchers.” He shook his head.
    “I started feeling sick about two in the morning on the way home, but he was already shaking from the chills. I knew we were in trouble.”
    I felt Jesse’s forehead. “If