It was high noon when Durkin came in sight of the farmhouse, and saw the children playing in the yard, and his wife standing in the kitchen door. Her stringy black hair annoyed him far out of proportion to its importance, and he was further incensed by the realization that she was staring up the road as if she had another complaint to make, and could hardly wait for him to come within earshot.
He drove into the yard muttering unpleasantly to himself. Abruptly his stepson Robert—a tall, freckled-faced youngster of nine—stopped playing. Seven-year-old Emily, thoughtful-eyed and less assertive, remained seated, but Durkin could see that there was a defiant something struggling in her head.
The ritual of mistrust they'd worked out against him never varied. As he descended from the car he became aware of a hostile silence hemming him in, making him feel like a stranger. Even their expressions betrayed them. The instant fear came into Robert's eyes Emily too became fearful, clutching the doll she was holding more tightly to her breast.
Flushed and resentful, Durkin stood waiting for his wife to advance toward him across the yard. She had been beautiful once, but she now only reminded him of a nag set out to pasture after years of usefulness about the farm. She was as handy about the farm as she was about a stove, but that didn't mean he had to be grateful to her.
He'd taken her in and married her, hadn't he? A woman of forty with two kids, a complaining woman who was always trying to meddle in his affairs.
"You're back early, Will!" Helen Durkin said.
"Yeah," he grunted, eyeing her bitterly.
"Did you buy the fertilizer, and the barbed wire?"
He shook his head, his lips writhing back from his teeth in cruel derision.
"I bought something better," he said. His voice was harsh, edged with mockery. "A present for the kids."