``Well?''

``He said a fat hell on Big Hans.''

``Don't be smart. What's he going to do?''

``Go back to sleep most likely.''

``You'd best get that whisky.''

``You go. Take the axe. Pa's scared to hell of axes.''

``Listen to me, Jorge, I've had enough to your sassing. This kid's froze bad. If I don't get some whisky down him he might die. You want the kid to die? Do you? Well, get your pa and get that whisky.''

``Pa don't care about the kid.''

``Jorge.''

``Well he don't. He don't care at all, and I don't care to get my head busted neither. He don't care, and I don't care to have his shit flung on me. He don't care about anybody. All he cares about is his whisky and that dry crack in his face. Get pig-drunk -- that's what he wants. He don't care about nothing else at all. Nothing. Not Pedersen's kid neither. That cock. Not the kid neither.''

``I'll get the spirits,'' Ma said.

I'd wound Big Hans up tight. I was ready to jump but when Ma said she'd get the whisky it surprised him like it surprised me, and he ran down. Ma never went near the old man when he was sleeping it off. Not any more. Not for years. The first thing every morning when she washed her face she could see the scar on her chin where he'd cut her with a boot cleat, and maybe she saw him heaving it again, the dirty sock popping out as it flew. It should have been nearly as easy for her to remember that as it was for Big Hans to remember going after the axe while he was still spattered with Pa's yellow sick insides.