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won’t come back to you at all. It’s happened before, you know, men vanishing from women they don’t know the worth of.”
    Alone, she sat stiff and erect at the table. He was just talking, poisoning her mind against Gerald. How should she get out of here? Run like a frightened doe and never face him again? No, Sarah. Stay for the bitter coffee. Scald the giddiness out of you once and for all. But on top of the resolve came the wish that Gerald might somehow appear at the door and take her home. Dear, gentle Gerald.
    She got up and went to the sink to draw the water for coffee. A row of medicine bottles stood on the windowsill, crusted with dust. Household remedies. She leaned close and examined a faded label: “Mrs. Joyce—take immediately upon need.”
    She turned from the window. A rocker stood in the corner of the room. In the old days the sick woman had sat in it on the back porch, rocking, and speaking to no one. The stale sickness of her was still about the house, Sarah thought. What did she know of people like this?
    He was threshing around upstairs like a penned bull. His muddy boots lay where he had taken them off, a pool of water gathering about them. Again she looked at the windowsill. No May wine there. Suddenly she remembered Dr. Philips’s words: “Lived on stimulants for years.” She could almost see the sour woman, even to her gasping for breath…“Take immediately.”
    Fix the coffee, Sarah. What kind of teasing is this? Teasing the dead from her grave before you. Teasing. Something in the thought disturbed her further…an association: Joyce watching her reach for the preserves last night, grinning at her. “Try it again, Sarah. You almost had it that time.” And she could still hear him asking, “Which bottle?” Not which jar, but which bottle.
    She grabbed the kettle and filled it. Stop it, Sarah. It’s the storm, the waiting, too much waiting…your time of life. She drew herself up against his coming, hearing his quick step on the stairs.
    “Will you give us a bit of iodine there from the window, Sarah? I’ve scratched myself on those blamed frames.”
    She selected the bottle carefully with her eyes, so that her trembling hand might not betray her.
    “Dab it on here,” he said, holding a white cuff away from his wrist.
    The palm of his hand was moist as she bent over it and she could smell the earth and the horse from it. Familiar. Everything about him had become familiar, too familiar. She felt his breath on her neck, and the hissing sound of it was the only sound in the room. She smeared the iodine on the cut and pulled away. His lips tightened across his teeth in a grin.
    “A kiss would make a tickle of the pain,” he said.
    Sarah thrust the iodine bottle from her and grabbed the flashlight. “I’m going home.”
    His jaw sagged as he stared at her. “Then what did you come for?”
    “Because I was lonesome. I was foolish…” Fear choked off her voice. A little trickle of saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth.
    “No! You came to torture me!”
    She forced one foot toward the door and the other after it. His voice rose in laughter as she lumbered away from him. “Good Lord, Sarah. Where’s the magnificent woman who rode to the winds with me last night?”
    She lunged into the electric cord in her retreat, searing her cheek on it. Joyce caught it and wrenched it from the wall, its splayed end springing along the floor like a whip. “And me thinking the greatest kindness would be if he never came home!”
    The doorknob slipped in her sweaty hand. She dried it frantically. He’s crazy, she thought. Mad-crazy.
    “You’re a lump, Sarah,” he shouted. “And Mr. Joyce is a joker. A joker and a dunce. He always was and he will be till the day they hang him!”
    The door yielded and she plunged down the steps and into the yard. In her wild haste she hurled herself against the rig and spun away from it as though it were something alive. She sucked in her breath to