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Show WORTHING FARM/6 And because the younger boy cried for it Elijah couldn't hit John, and so set him down to snivel in the dust. He looked at the two of them, John still whimpering in fear, Worin, his face covered with dust, jumping up and down taunting his brother. Elijah reached down and cuffed them both. "You'll shut up now, both of you, and keep your hands to yourselfs, or by damn you'll both eat dust till you drown in it." John and Worin fell silent, and watched him as he went back to the door of the house. Elijah stopped at the door, not wanting to go in, not caring to stay out. The door was unpainted, weathered grey, and splintering. One of the boards was much newer than the others. Grannam's husband had put them there, Grannam used to tell him, before Elijah was old enough to find his way to the latrine. Elijah didn't remember. But he stepped back and looked at the house. It was old. Only two rooms and a few sheds built on, the roof rethatched in cornhusks and shocks a hundred times, a thousand times. Probably not a board in the house that was there when it was first built, Grannam said. "Who builded it?" Elijah had asked her when he was young. "Who?" she repeated, laughing. "Who makes the stars shine? Who makes the sun spin round and round us every day? Jason, boy, Jason builded this house when the world was brand new and the forest trees were still little things that you could see over, clear to Mount Waters without climbing on the roof." It was Jason's hand that held Elijah to Worthing Farm. Elijah tried to picture Jason in his mind. Grannam had said that |