The Sojourn

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She rises before sunup without waking her husband or the child still asleep in the Moses basket at their bedside and walks through the dark of the small shack into the kitchen. At the stove she rocks the fire grate, takes kindling and three quartered aspen from the wood-box, wraps them in newspaper and dried bark and heaps them on the nearspent embers, slides the vent for draft, then waits as smoke and threads of flame rouse and lick the underside of a worn and atramental gloss. From a pitcher she fills the kettle and places it over the heat, sits down, and stares absentmindedly in the dawning at an icon of Saint Michael the Archangel resting on a shelf cut into a corner of the wall, until she catches herself drifting, shakes off sleep, stands, and takes up another log to feed the blaze.

Her husband emerges from the bedroom and walks somnolent into the cramped water closet. She waits, listening through the walls (no more than partitions of pine crates cobbled together) as he hawks and spits and rinses the basin, then stands for a long while to relieve himself. He steps into the kitchen toweling his face, leans against the window, and peers blankly out at slag heaps and a smelter, all they can claim for a view.

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