“Plays a tune right outen his spit,” Stig said. “Oh, God’s pity on us all,” Americy said. She was rocking herself forward and back. “What’s God got to do about this?” Theodosia asked. She turned on Americy, her words like an outcry. Americy stopped her rocking and sat stilled, afraid before the rush of the question. “What’s God got to do? I do’ know,” Americy said. And then she whispered, “Oh, God ’a’ pity.” “Where is any God?” “A ham bone to gnaw on’s all I want. My spit wants a ham bone to lick,” Stig said. “Oh, I d’know,” Americy said, speaking to both of them. “Oh, I got no ham bone.” Her face was bent low and her voice was low. “Ol’ rat go crawl, crawl, so weak he can’t go.” Theodosia looked at the small flame in the lamp behind the dull burnt chimney, her eyes on the little apple of light that throbbed unevenly there. She was thinking of the light as a small flower in bloom, and she traced its essence to Americy’s face and then to Stig’s forehead where it shone against his brow. The shadows beside Americy’s nostrils made hollows in the long, blank brown of her face, her two dark eyes bent over the guitar in a stupid anxiety to accomplish a chord she had known a few days before. There was a step outside on the roadway, and presently steps were moving away from the house. Somebody had been looking in at the window. Theodosia stirred a little in her chair and her own part in the room troubled her, in the house. “What am I here? What to them?” she was asking herself. She sat in the stiff chair, in the middle of the floor, facing Americy, feeling Lethe’s hate. “Her hate pushes me back, but it does not push me out at the door,” she was thinking. She began to play some melody on the fiddle, a melody which she broke and distorted, rubbing the bow softly over the gut, making a thin, distracted music, unjointed, without logic. Lethe turned away and sat toward the table, and Stig had begun to tell his story again. Lethe’s hate did not forbid her, but rather it pricked the air with some fertile pollen and prepared every moment a newer menace, and to each moment the fiddle responded with soft demonic music, ill-flavored, crooked, sinister. She brought her playing to crashing discords, softly played, a disturbance working upward through half-tones, and Lethe turned about, her head and shoulders facing the fiddle, and said: “To let Min Harter take your man. God’s sake. Right afore your own eyes. Would I stand that-there, me? Min lame and you got two good legs yourself.” “You hate me hard, don’t you, Lethe,” Theodosia said, speaking sharply. She tried to turn back to Americy’s song. “Or let Flo Agnew. Some said it was Flo Agnew got your goat. God’s sake! You a tame one.” Lethe’s words were bitter to her own taste now, turned back upon herself, as if she were defending herself.