It was too hot for a nap. Wearing seersucker shorts with a torn pocket and a cut-off, no-sleeve white T-shirt inherited from her father, she crept barefoot down the narrow back stairs for a drink of cold water and a sugar cookie; but when she heard them arguing she changed her mind, her stomach suddenly heavy. Sometimes she threw up when her mother and grandmother had fights. Instead of going into the kitchen she tiptoed along the back hall, through the laundry room, and out the screen door, into the ripe summer heat. Wet sheets hung on the carousel clothesline, and from across the grass she smelled the bleach her mother used to make them white. She thought she might find her father in the shed where he sometimes fixed things like the rusty plow he told her was a beautiful antique. It looked plain old to Ellen, but she believed what her father said because he was a soldier. In the hot, murky shed, spiderwebs drooped across the corners from the rafters and the air smelled of oil and sawdust.
