"What bullet?"
"Never mind. Will you tell me where your shoes are?"
Reuben could not answer. Joseph Cory's voice fumed at the foot of the stairs: "Come down! Coats—don't forget your coats!"
Ben shouted: "We're coming!" He pursued the shoes under the fallen bed-cover. He found his own breeches and shirt, then his hunting-knife where it always rested on the table by the bed.
Orange glory beyond the window marvelously bloomed, flooding Reuben's angelic face and thin naked body moving toward the square of light. "Why," said Reuben—"why, the cods're burning us!"
"God's mercy, get away from that window!"
He had to pull Reuben from it; force the shoes on his feet and find armholes for him. Father was calling again. Ben hustled his brother to the head of the stairs. "Stay here. I'll get the coats."
The room shimmered. Red-black ghosts in a swirling jig hid the coats, defying Ben to come get them and fall on his face. He got them; then he too was drawn against his will to the window.
The fire danced on his left, the heart of it out of sight—west and south, beyond the training field, the Hawks house perhaps. North, near the meeting-house, a confusion of shapes under gunfire was twisting toward some climax. Five fire-tinted men broke away, soundless to Ben, moving with apparent slowness. One leaped forward in mid-stride to drop in the white; his arms sought each other above his head, scooping the snow as if he would embrace it, or climb like a hurt bug up the side of a world for him overturned.
The others disregarded him, plunging toward the Cory house. Reuben was trying to speak. "I'm here, Ru. We must go down—could be trapped." Reuben mumbled something. "What?"