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“Shitfire,” Noah said. “I thought you’d never git rid of him. He shore stayed longer than usual, and I was a-gittin powerful cold out yonder in the dark.”

“You ortent to be so afeared of him. He’s a good injun.”

“The only good injun is a dead injun,” Noah replied. Then he asked, “What you takin a bath this time of night fer?”

But Jacob just grinned and finished his bath, splashing all the soap off with hot rainwater. Then he opened the door and went naked across his fields to the creek. He tested the creekwater with his toe. It was icy cold, in this time of late winter, but he took a deep breath and plunged in. He rubbed himself all over with the creekwater, then his teeth began chattering, and he climbed out and ran up the hill toward his spring. Even the exertion of running did not keep him from being covered with gooseflesh big as small-pox. But the springwater, he discovered, was of a much higher temperature than the creekwater, and seemed almost warm by comparison. Again he washed himself all over, top to toes. The effect of all the cold and cool water was sobering him up, so after his last bath he had to return to the cabin for one more drink. Noah was asleep. Jacob drank straight from the jug, several lusty swallows, said “Ah!” and smacked his lips, then started out for the Indian’s house.

It was pitch dark, there was no moon, and he couldn’t find out which of the dwellings in the camp was Fanshaw’s. He tried the west doors of several, groping around on his hands and knees inside without finding any woman. He began to think that Fanshaw was just playing a joke on him. But he tried one more west door, and there she was. His hand touched her fur coverlet and then her bare leg. She was lying on her back. She didn’t say anything and of course he didn’t either. He just climbed on top of her. She embraced him, with her arms and legs alike. Soon, soon they became fastened between. Fanshaw was right: there was much joy. The woman made murmurs and sighs of joy, and Jacob realized he was being pretty noisy himself. He wished this joy could go on all night, but there is an end to everything, and finally the woman’s legs unclasped their embrace of his back and straightened out, and then the woman’s whole body arched itself into a long quivering arc: an ark: a bow: a soft but taut arch that held him suspended up from the earth for a long moment until he fired: burst: was a lightningbolt and its thunderclap and the afterclaps rattling slowly away.

When he woke up it was daylight and he was still there, but the woman was gone.

“Shitfire, whar in tarnation have you been, and mothernaked to boot?” his brother Noah demanded, when, at long last, Jacob returned to his own bed.

Jacob decided not to hide it. “I laid with that injun’s squaw last night.”

“What je do thet fer?” Noah asked innocently.

“Huh? I mean, I done went and entered her.”

“Entered her?”

“You eejit. We fucked.”

“Oh,” Noah said. “What’d it feel like?”

“Lightnin and thunder.”

“Gee,” Noah said.

“You orter try it sometime,” Jacob suggested.

“Me? Shitfire, I wouldn’t go near a injun even to fuck it.”

All that day, Jacob noticed an irregularity in himself, perhaps an afterclap of his afterclaps: he didn’t feel like doing anything. This was the first white man’s “energy shortage” in the Ozarks. Jacob spent the whole day sitting by his fire. This is the origin of the quite erroneous concept of the “shiftless hillbilly.” Usually Jacob was industrious, for the hard life of the frontiersman admits of no indolence. He couldn’t quite understand why he didn’t feel like doing any work today, unless it had something to do with last night, although it really wasn’t all that much effort to do the one-on-top-together-fastened-between, and he’d had a good night’s sleep in the meantime. But suddenly Jacob realized that Fanshaw was terribly lazy, even for an Indian. He never seemed to do much: back in the summer he had puttered in his garden for maybe half an hour each day, and that was it. Even on hunts, he always