“Kildee sat in the doorway and looked out at the thick, black night. His muscular hands shook helplessly and clutched at the rough board step. His strength had left him. He felt weak. Shaken. Afraid. The darkness came up close. It filled his eyes and ears and nostrils. It slipped past him into the fire-lit room. The fire still burned. There was no other light to be had. But darkness filled the corners. Silent darkness. Black, dumb darkness. It told nobody what it was, or what it was doing. It was like death. It came. It went. Nobody could keep it away. Nobody.

. . . If God was mad with him for plowing Green Thursday, why didn’t He strike him with lightning and kill him? That would have been easy enough. But to burn a baby—it wasn’t square.”

—Julia Peterkin (1880–1961), “Green Thursday,” from Green Thursday: Stories by Julia Peterkin, first published in 1924.