When she stood no more than ten feet before him she let the baby slip down and stand by himself, braced against her knee.

"You applying?" she asked smilelessly.

His eyes dropped to her stomach. She was pregnant as hell.

She watched, waiting for him to turn heel and run. Instead, his eyes returned to her face. At least she thought they did from the slight lifting of his hat brim.

"I reckon I am." He stood absolutely still, not a nerve flinching.

"I’m the one placed the ad," she told him, so there’d be no question.

"Figured you were."

"There’s three of us… nearly four."

"Figured there were."

"The place needs work."

She waited, but he didn’t say he figured it did, didn’t even glance sideways at all the junk in the yard.

"You still interested?" she asked.

She’d never seen anyone could stand so still. "I reckon so." His britches were so loose she expected them to drop over his hipbones any second. His gut was hollow. But he had wiry arms, the kind that look as strong relaxed as flexed, with veins standing out in the hollows where the flesh was palest. He might be thin, but he wasn’t puny. He’d be a worker.

"Then take your hat off so’s I can see you one time."

Will Parker wasn’t fond of removing his hat. When he’d been released from prison his hat and boots were the only things they’d returned to him. The Stetson was oily, misshapen, but an old friend. Without it he felt naked.

Still, he answered politely, "Yes, ma’am."

Once the hat was off he stood without fidgeting, letting her get a gander at his face. It was long and lean, like the rest of him, with brown eyes that looked as if he worked hard to keep the expression out of them. Same with his voice; it was respectful but flat. He didn’t smile, but his mouth was good, had a nice shape to the upper lip with two definite peaks, which she liked. His hair was a dirty blond, the color of a collie, shaggy at the back and around his ears. The front was plastered against his brow from his hatband. "You could use a haircut," was all she said.

"Yes, ma’am."

He put his hat back on and it hid his eyes again, while from beneath its shadow he took in the woman’s worn cotton clothes, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, the soiled skirt where her belly was fullest. Her face might have been pretty, but looked old before its time. Maybe it was just the hair, flying around like goose grass from whatever moored it at the back of her neck. He took her for thirty, maybe, but thought if she ever smiled it might take five years off her.

"I’m Eleanor Dinsmore… Mrs. Glendon Dinsmore."

"Will Parker," he returned, curling a hand around his hat brim, then catching his thumb in a back pocket again.

She knew right off he was a man of few words; that’d suit her just fine. Even when she gave him the chance he didn’t ask questions like most men would. So she went on asking them herself.

"You been around here long?"

"Four days."

"Four days where?"

"Been workin’ at the sawmill."

"Workin’ for Overmire?"

Will nodded.

"He’s no good. You’re better off workin’ here." She glanced in a semicircle and went on: "I been here all my life, in Whitney."

She didn’t sigh, but she didn’t need to. He heard the weariness in her words as she scanned the dismal yard. Her eyes returned to him and she rested one knobby hand on her stomach. When she spoke again her voice held a hint of puzzlement. "Mister, I’ve had that ad up at the sawmill for over three months now and you’re the first one fool enough to come up that hill and check it out. I know what this place is. I know what I am. Down below they call me crazy." Her head jutted forward. "Did you know that?"

"Yes, ma’am," he answered quietly.

Her face registered surprise, then she chuckled. "Honest, ain’t you? Well, I’m just wondering why you ain’t run yet, is all."

He crossed his arms and shifted his weight to the opposite hip. She had the shoe on the wrong foot. Once she found out about his record he’d be marching down that road faster than a roach when the light comes on. Telling her was as good as putting a shotgun in her hands. But she was bound to find out eventually; might as well get it over with.

"Maybe you should be the one runnin’."

"Why’s that?"

Will Parker looked her square in the eyes. "I done time in prison. You might’s well know it, right off."

He expected quick signs of withdrawal. Instead Eleanor Dinsmore pursed her mouth and said in an ornery tone, "I says to take that hat off so’s I can see what kind of man I’m talkin’ to here."

He took it off slowly, revealing a countenance wiped clean of all emotion.

"What’d they put you in there for?" She could tell by the nervous tap of his hat brim on his thigh that he wanted to put it back on. It pleased her that he didn’t.

"They say I killed a woman in a Texas whorehouse."

His answer stunned her, but she could be as poker-faced as he. "Did you?" she shot back, watching his unflinching eyes. The control. The expressionlessness. He swallowed once and his Adam’s apple bobbed.

"Yes, ma’am."

She submerged another jolt of surprise and asked, "Did you have good reason?"

"I thought so at the time."

Point-blank, she asked, "Well, Will Parker, you plan on doing that to me?"

The question caught Will by surprise and tipped up the corners of his lips. "No, ma’am," he answered quietly.

She stared hard into his eyes, came two steps closer and decided he didn’t look like a killer, nor act like one. He was sure no liar, and he had a workingman’s arms and wasn’t going to gab her head off. It was good enough for her.

"Okay, then, you can come on up to the house. They say I’m crazy anyway, might’s well give ’em something to back it up." She picked up the baby, herded the toddler along by the back of his head and led the way toward the house. The toddler peeked around to see if Will was following; the baby stared over its mother’s shoulder; but the mother herself turned her back as if to say, do what you will, Will Parker.

She walked like a pelican, swaying with each step in an ungainly fashion. Her hair was dull, her shoulders round and her hips wide.

The house was a tacky thing, atilt in several directions at once. It looked to have been built in stages, each addition blown slightly off level by the prevailing wind of the moment. The main body listed northeast, an ell west and the stoop east. The windows were off square, there were tin patches on the roof, and the porch steps were rotting.

But inside it smelled of fresh bread.

Will’s eyes found it, cooling on the kitchen cupboard beneath a dishtowel. He had to force his attention back to Eleanor Dinsmore when she put the baby in a high chair and offered, "How about a cup of coffee?"

He nodded silently, venturing no further than the rag rug at the kitchen door. His eyes followed as she fetched two cracked cups and filled them from a white enamel pot on the iron cookstove while the blond child hid in her skirts, hindering her footsteps.

"Leave off now, Donald Wade, so I can get Mr. Parker his coffee." The child clung, sucking his thumb until at last she reached down to pick him up. "This here is Donald Wade," she said. "He’s kind of shy. Hasn’t seen many strangers in his life."

Will remained by the door. "Howdy, Donald Wade," he said, nodding. Donald Wade buried his face in his mother’s neck while she sat down on a scarred wooden chair at a table covered with red flowered oilcloth.

"You gonna stand by that door all night?" she inquired.

"No, ma’am." He approached the table cautiously, pulled out a chair and sat well away from Eleanor Dinsmore, his hat again pulled low over his eyes. She waited, but he only took a pull on his hot coffee, saying nothing, eyes flickering occasionally to her and the boy and something behind her.

"I guess you’re wondering about me," she said at last. She smoothed the back of Donald Wade’s shirt with a palm, waiting for questions that didn’t come. The room carried only the sound of the baby slapping his hand on the wooden tray of the high chair. She rose and fetched a dry biscuit and laid it on the tray. The baby gurgled, took it in a fat fist and began gumming it. She stood behind him and regarded Will while repeatedly brushing the child’s feathery hair back from his forehead. She wished Will would look at her, would take that hat off so they could get started. Donald Wade had followed her, was again clinging to her skirts. Still feathering the baby’s hair, she found Donald Wade’s head with her free hand. Standing so, she said what needed saying.

"The baby’s name is Thomas. He’s near a year and a half old. Donald Wade here, he’s going on four. This one’s going to be born just shy of Christmas, close as I can reckon. Their daddy’s name was Glendon."

Will Parker’s eyes were drawn to her stomach as she rested a hand on it. He thought about how maybe there was more than one kind of prison.

"Where’s their daddy?" he inquired, lifting his eyes to her face.

She nodded westward. "Out in the orchard. I buried him out there."

"I thought-" But he stopped.

"You got a strange way of not sayin’ things, Mr. Parker. How’s a body supposed to make up a mind when you keep closed up so?" Will studied her, finding it hard to let loose after five years, and especially when she stood with her children at guard. "Go on, then, say it," Eleanor Dinsmore prodded.

"I thought maybe your man run off. So many of ’em are doin’ that since the depression."

"I wouldn’t be lookin’ for no husband then, would I?"

His glance dropped guiltily to his coffee cup. "I reckon not."

"And anyway, Glendon woulda never dreamed of runnin’ off. He didn’t have to. He was so full of dreams he wasn’t here anyways. Always miles away dreamin’ about this and that. The two of us together, we had lots of dreams once." The way she looked at him, Will knew she harbored dreams no longer.

"How long’s he been dead?"

"Oh, don’t you worry none, the baby is his."

Will colored. "I didn’t mean that."

"Course you did. I watched your eyes when you first come up here. He’s been dead since April. It was his dreams killed him. This time it was the bees and his honey. He thought he’d get rich real fast making honey out in the orchard, but the bees they started swarmin’ and he was in too much of a hurry to use good sense. I told him to shoot the branch down with a shotgun, but he wouldn’t listen. He went out on a branch, and sure enough, it broke, and so did he. He never would listen to me much." A faraway look came into her eyes. Will watched the way her hands lingered in the baby’s hair.

"Some men are like that." The words felt strange on Will’s lips. Comfort-either getting it or giving it-was foreign to him.

"We sure were happy, though. He had a way about him." Her expression as she spoke made Will sure it had once been Glendon Dinsmore’s hair through which she’d run her fingers that way. She acted as if she’d forgotten Will was in the room. He couldn’t quit watching her hands. It was another of those soft things that got him deep in the gut-the sight of her leafing through the baby’s airy hair while the child continued with its biscuit and made gurgling sounds. He wondered if anyone had ever done that to him, maybe sometime long before he had memory, but he had no conscious recollection of ever being touched that way.

Eleanor Dinsmore drew herself back to the present to find Will Parker’s eyes on her hands.

"So, what’re your thoughts, Mr. Parker?"

He glanced up, refocused his eyes. "It don’t matter about the kids."

"Don’t matter?"

"I mean, I don’t mind that you’ve got them. Your ad didn’t say."

"You like kids then?" she asked hopefully.

"I don’t know. Never been around ’em much. Yours seem nice enough."

She smiled at her boys and gave each a love pat. "They can be a joy." He couldn’t help wondering at her reasoning, for she looked tired and worn beyond her years, having the near-three she did. "Just make sure, Mr. Parker," she added, "’cause three’s a lot. I won’t have you layin’ a hand on them when they’re troublesome. They’re Glendon’s boys and he woulda never dreamed of layin’ a hand on them."

Just what did she take him for? He felt himself blush. But what else was she supposed to think after what he’d revealed out there in the yard?

"You got my word."

She believed him. Maybe because of the way his eyes lingered on Baby Thomas’s hair. She liked his eyes, and they had a way of turning soft when they’d light on the boys. But the boys weren’t the only consideration.

"It’s got to be said," she went on. "I loved Glendon somethin’ fierce. It takes some time to get over a man like that. I wouldn’t be lookin’ for a man ’less I had to. But winter’s comin’, and the baby, too. I was in a fix, Mr. Parker. You understand, don’t you?"