＃１０

Amos took a real liking to the farm that winter—so he said—and begged to stay a while longer. None of us believed him much, but we could hardly refuse. Most days he busied himself in the pig muck so Mary and I could see him suffer from the kitchen, her worried sick, my gaze to the treeline with a hand by my hip. Come dinnertime, Amos told lavish fibs of his newfound joy in scutwork: how he’d learned to split logs cleanly and calm the horses by removing his hat. It didn’t matter. None of it could last, for our boy had killed the wrong man back in Abilene.