Small matters at the time, only to assume true proportions when from a far distance she looked back on them; when the fatigue and discomfort had been forgotten, and all that stood out was that she and Tom had been together.
Discomfort there was. The rain was as though it had never been, and again the heat was intolerable. The ground outside cracked and fissured, and the air that came through the opened doors was hot and lifeless, and laden with graywhite dust. She would wipe it away, only to have it come back again. She was always thirsty, with a thirst that the flattish alkaline water from the well did not assuage. The very thought of handling food sickened her, the bacon limp and running with grease, the butter a formless oily mass. The meat Tom brought once or twice a week from Judson had to be cooked at once or it spoiled.
The very stove in that weather became her deadly enemy. It seemed to play tricks on her with malicious intent. One moment it would be burning intensely, devastatingly; the next she would find it had died entirely. She took to watching it, standing by it with a fresh stove-length of wood in her hand, as if she meant to beat it into submission. Her hair was always damp, her face covered with little beads of moisture, her hands burned and roughened.
In between these times there were hours when she had nothing to do. She would bathe herself and then lie down, but the bed would be blistering hot. She took to lying on the floor instead for coolness, and Tom, coming in unexpectedly one day, found her there asleep. She was so pale, she lay so still, that he thought she had fainted.
"Kay!" he said. "Kay!"
When he found she had only been sleeping he was angry with relief.
"That's a fool thing to do, lying on the floor like that? Suppose" he cast around for something that might have threatened her. "Suppose a rattler had crawled in?"
During this part, as she looked back later, Tom had always been working. He worked at white heat, frenziedly and yet with a cool purpose behind that frenzy. He had freighted lumber from the railroad and was preparing for the winter.
