“But here’s the long and short of it,” Zeke said, holding up a finger and pushing it under Hale’s nose. “There were twenty-two people inside those cells, and Maynard saved them, every last one. It cost him his life, and he didn’t get nothing for it.”

As the kid turned to his front door and reached for the knob, he added, “And neither did we.”

Three

Briar Wilkes closed the door behind the biographer.

She leaned her forehead against it for a moment and walked away, back to the fire. She warmed her hands there, collected her boots, and began to unbutton her shirt and loosen the support cinch that held it close against her body.

Down the hall she passed the doors to her father’s room and her son’s room. Both doors may as well have been nailed shut for all she ever opened them. She hadn’t been inside her father’s room in years. She hadn’t been inside her son’s room since… she couldn’t remember a specific time, no matter how hard she tried — nor could she even recall what it looked like.

Out in the hall she stopped in front of Ezekiel’s door.

Her decision to abandon Maynard’s room had come from philosophical necessity; but the boy’s room she avoided for no real reason. If anyone ever asked (and of course, no one ever did ) then she might’ve made an excuse about respecting his privacy; but it was simpler than that, and possibly worse. She left the room alone because she was purely uncurious about it. Her lack of interest might have been interpreted as a lack of caring, but it was only a side effect of permanent exhaustion. Even knowing this, she felt a pang of guilt and she said out loud, because there was no one to hear her — or agree with her, or argue with her — “I’m a terrible mother.”

It was only an observation, but she felt the need to refute it in some way, so she put her hand on the knob and gave it a twist.

The door drooped inward, and Briar leaned her lantern into the cave-black darkness.

A bed with a flat, familiar-looking headboard was pushed into the corner. It was the one she’d slept in as a child, and it was long enough to hold a grown man, but only half as wide as her own. The slats were covered with an old feather mattress that had been flattened until it was barely an inch or two thick. A heavy comforter flopped atop it, folded backward and tangled around in a dirty sheet.

Beside the window at the foot of the bed there lurked a blocky brown chest of drawers and a pile of dirty clothes that was pocked with stray and unmatched boots.

“I need to wash his clothes,” she mumbled, knowing that it would have to wait until Sunday unless she planned to do laundry at night — and knowing also that Zeke was likely to get fed up and do his own before then. She’d never heard of a boy who performed so much of his own upkeep, but things were different for families all over since the Blight. Things were different for everyone, yes. But things were especially different for Briar and Zeke.

She liked to think that he understood, at least a little bit, why she saw him as infrequently as she did. And she preferred to assume that he didn’t blame her too badly. Boys wanted freedom, didn’t they? They valued their independence, and wore it as a sign of maturity; and if she thought about it that way, then her son was a lucky fellow indeed.

A bump and a fumble rattled the front door. Briar jumped, and closed the bedroom door, and walked quickly down the hall.

From behind the safety of her own bedroom door she finished peeling away her work clothes, and when she heard the stomp of her son’s shoes in the front room, she called out, “Zeke, you home?” She felt silly for asking, but it was as good a greeting as any.

“What?”

“I said, you’re home, aren’t you?”

“I’m home,” he hollered. “Where are you?”

“I’ll be out in a second,” she told him. More like a minute later she emerged wearing something that smelled less like industrial lubricant and coal dust. “Where have you been?” she asked.

“Out.” He had already removed his coat and left it to hang on the rack by the door.

“Did you eat?” she asked, trying not to notice how thin he looked. “I got paid yesterday. I know we’re low on cupboard fixings, but I can change that soon. And we’ve still got a little something left around here.”

“No, I already ate.” He always said that. She never knew if he was telling the truth. He deflected any follow-up questions by asking, “Did you get home late tonight? It’s cold in here. I take it the fire hasn’t been up very long.”

She nodded, and went to the pantry. She was starving, but she was so often hungry that she’d learned to think around it. “I took an extra shift. We had somebody out sick.” On the top shelf of the pantry there was a mixture of dried beans and corn that cooked up into a light stew. Briar pulled it down and wished she had meat to go with it, but she didn’t wish very long or hard.

She set a pot of water to boil and reached under a towel for a bit of bread that was almost too stale to eat anymore, but she stuffed it into her mouth and chewed it fast.

Ezekiel took the seat that Hale had borrowed and dragged it over to the fire to toast some of the frigid stiffness out of his hands. “I saw that man leaving,” he said, loud enough that she would hear him around the corner.

“You did, did you?”

“What did he want?”

A rattling dump of poured soup mix splashed into the pot. “To talk. It’s late, I know. I guess it looks bad, but what would the neighbors do about it — talk nasty behind our backs?”

She heard a grin in her son’s voice when he asked, “What did he want to talk about?”

She didn’t answer him. She finished chewing the bread and asked,

“Are you sure you don’t want any of this? There’s plenty for two, and you should see yourself. You’re skin and bones.”

“I told you, I ate already. You fill up. You’re skinnier than me.”

“Am not,” she fussed back.

“Are too. But what did that man want?” he asked again.

She came around the corner and leaned against the wall, her arms folded and her hair more fallen down than pinned up. She said, “He’s writing a book about your grandfather. Or he says he is.”

“You think maybe he’s not?”

Briar stared intently at her son, trying to figure out who he looked like when he made that carefully emotionless, innocent face. Not his father, certainly, though the poor child had inherited the preposterous hair. Neither as dark as hers, nor as light as his father’s, the mop could not be combed nor oiled into decent behavior. It was exactly the sort of hair that, when it occurred on a baby, old ladies would fondly disturb while making cooing noises. But the older Zeke grew, the more ridiculous it looked.

“Mother?” he tried again. “You think maybe that man was lying?”

She shook her head quickly, not in answer but to clear it. “Oh. Well, I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I was just… I was looking at you, that’s all. I don’t see you enough, I don’t think. We should, I don’t know… We should do something together, sometime.”

He squirmed. “Like what?”

His squirming did not go unnoticed. She tried to back away from the suggestion. “I didn’t have anything in mind. And maybe it’s a bad idea. It’s probably… well.” She turned and went back into the kitchen so she could talk to him without having to watch his discomfort while she confessed the truth. “It’s probably easier for you anyway, that I keep my distance. I imagine you have a hard enough time living it down, being my boy. Sometimes I think the kindest thing I can do is let you pretend I don’t exist.”

No argument came from the fireplace until he said, “It’s not so bad being yours. I’m not ashamed of you or anything, you know.” But he didn’t leave the fire to come and say it to her face.