Four Men and a Shelf

The second floor had been wanting coal for two days.

It was a thing that happened all winter and that made Sarah angry with a cold, objectless anger, because there was nobody to blame: the coal man delivered in the yard, the boys carried the buckets up, the boys were three for the whole house, and by evening there was always coal missing somewhere. You ended up carrying it up yourself.

She carried two buckets up that evening, toward eight, one in each hand, stopping at every landing.

It was cold in the second-floor corridor. The window at the end had a gap under the frame and the draft came through at ankle height the whole length of it.