She bled him like new family tends to do, quickly and violently. His money went first -- it drew her -- and his time soon followed. He became accustomed to waking when the clock was bright in the darkness.

This time she was after some firewood. He stood in the dark with his arms close to his chest. His truck idled nearby, ready for a quick getaway like a devoted horse. The exhaust pipe fashioned shapes of cold steam in the night.

"I've got no wood," she complained. "That Jen, she stole it all. While I was in town at work, I think. Just like her to do that."

She kicked at the dust of wood shavings on the porch. "She does this sorta thing all the time."

He didn't ask what she expected him to do. She would tell him soon enough. And she did.

"I want you to go up there," she said, pointing at the tangle of forest that sprang up around the crest of the short hills beside her mobile home. "There's some old trees there, fallin' apart and broken down. You can cut those."

"You got an axe?" he asked her.

She stared dumbly at him. "No. I thought you'd bring one."

"You didn't tell me you wanted firewood."

"I figured you had one in your truck."

"Why would I carry an axe in my truck?"

She sighed and a mist blossomed from her lips. "Because," she said. "That's what men carry in their trucks."

His brow creased and he kicked at the tire of his truck. "I'll have to go home and get one if you don't have one," he said. He opened the door and made to climb in.

"Wait," she said urgently.

She was standing in her bathrobe, an old patchwork thing shot full of holes. He could see patches of pale skin beneath it, dry in the night air.

She thumbed over her shoulder at the screen door. "It's real cold in there without wood. Let me come with?"

Before he could answer, she was in the cab of the truck. His breath rushed out. She was picking at her nails as he climbed inside.

She talked for the duration of the trip. He was used to her voice by now. Sometimes he thought he heard his wife's sister's voice more than he heard his wife's. He was mixing them up, slowly and unintentionally.

While they drove she banged on his dashboard periodically. "Heater don't work," he would say, and she would bang on it harder, just in case.

When she moved close to him on the stiff vinyl bench seat, they both pretended it was because of the cold. But there was no reason for her hand to rest on his knee like it came to, and he felt a very small thrill rock him.

They continued to talk -- rather, she did -- and he listened, for the first time, to what she had to say. He began to decipher her loneliness in the simplicity of her sentences. In the wistful arrogance of her words he detected the injustices that had been exacted upon her. Though she was talking about the politics of the supermarket bank branch that she worked at, he learned that she had never gotten over the sudden departure of her only husband many years ago. He came to know her through her banality.

He turned the truck off into the long drive that led to his small home. A light burned in the window. Katy was up, then. He wondered how she would take to this new episode. She had been as upset by the constant pleading as he had -- sometimes more, in fact. She would go stiff when the phone rang, and he would answer it, knowing that she would erupt at her sister if she answered the phone and it was, once again, Helen calling.

Helen's hand slid off of his knee as the house grew larger in the windshield, and she moved toward the passenger door again. He felt a vacuum in the space where she had, for a moment, existed perfectly.

"I'll just be a moment," he said, jamming the transmission into neutral, yanking the parking brake, and opening the door.

Helen nodded and an almost invisible smile tugged at the corners of her lips. He closed the door before he caught this, and when he looked at her through the frost of the window, the smile was gone -- but it echoed in the glint of the house lights in her eyes. He returned the smile, then turned for the house.

Katy was standing in the living room in front of the fireplace. A pair of logs burned slowly, and the room smelled of smoky hickory.

"She called again, didn't she," Katy said flatly. "I knew it. I woke up and you were gone and you didn't even hang the phone up right, so that stupid ee-ee-ee woke me, and I knew she had called again. She did, didn't she."

He nodded. "Jen apparently took all of her firewood."

"You cut more for her?" Katy asked.

"No. I came back for the axe."

"I don't want you to go."

He looked down at the floor and let the silence grow before he said, "I have to. She'll freeze out there without her woodstove, Katy. You know that."

"Don't go. She'll be fine. She will."

"Katy..."

"Look, I'll call her up and tell her you had a flat tire or something. Or I'll just tell her to leave us alone." Katy stepped forward and gripped his upper arm with her hands. "Please, let me. I don't want you to go."

He studied his wife's face and saw in the annoyance printed there a hint of fear. Of what, he wondered. Certainly not of being left alone; Katy was much too resilient and bullheaded for that.

He let it be and simply said, "I'll be home in just a few minutes. Two cords of wood, Katy, that's all." As her features went slack, he said, "Why don't you brew up some coffee? We'll drink it in front of the fire when I get back."

She nodded and let go reluctantly. He kissed her cheek, then picked the axe up from its place beside the bundle of wood next to the fireplace and went to the door. "Be fast," Katy said, and she kissed him hard.

"I'll be home before I'm gone," he said, and they smiled against each other's lips. Then he pulled away and moved through the door easily.

Katy watched him disappear into the black yard. He was lit up by the interior light when he opened the truck door. She saw Helen there, forlorn and distant, and saw Helen's face change just before he closed the door and the light extinguished.

The headlights illuminated the silvery frost on the leafless trees as the pickup bumped away from the house, and Katy watched until they swung behind the ridge. When all was black, she went to bed, moving her body into the place where his had been, and let the fire burn itself out.

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