In his seventy-five years, Samuel Beggs could not remember so much rain. Now, here toward the end of January, it had begun to snow and sleet; he told everyone neither could he remember a Missouri winter so cold. But it was no usual winter; floods were everywhere. The Ohio, just down the road, over the levee, threatened them all. He could not remember when that river had acted so bad and it pleased him he had so much to remember. The wind drove sleet like needles, but he looked ahead at a small cemetery neatly defined into a square by four white posts at its corners. From the road, three steps of the same white stone led up to it. Carved into the top riser, in the script Pap had wanted, was their name: BEGGS. TO read the gravestones was a story Samuel often read to himself. His Pap and Mam lay under one large stone, Amos and Mary; their dates could barely be read. Pap had settled here, worked his way from the east to Cincinnati, stayed briefly, then moved to Cairo; but the rich land in the shadow of the Mississippi and Ohio drew him across the river, into Missouri.
