Sharon watched Louie's face intently as he talked. He was two years older than she, but she had always thought of him as a little brother. While not stupid, he wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and between his clowning and his insular holler ways, she had often felt both condenscending and protective of him. She knew Little Billy had felt the same.

For the first time, she saw him as a grown man. She saw some of the hardness of his Daddy in him too. Not the meanness, no. At least not yet. Life in these hollers had always been hard, and it had taken hard, tough people to settle in these places. The soil was hard, infertile and rocky, the coal was hard to get to, and the boss-men in the mines even harder. A man could work himself down to bone, and his wife and children too, and still see his family go hungry. But a man needed his pride to keep going, even if his only pride was in his own toughness.

Louie was tough. She saw that now, and wondered how she could not have seen it before. His whole young life had been hard, but he had been, and would continue to be equal to the task of living it.

He was a grown man. As she sat beside him, watching him as he talked, she understood in contrast that she was not yet a grown woman.

When he had finished speaking, she simply hugged him and said, "I understand."