Finishing the dishes, Clovis spread the last of the wet cloths over the windowsill to dry. Cook, having deserted the kitchen as soon as the noon meal was served, now returned, and saw that all was in order. She had brought from the smoke house one of the last of the hams they had cured the winter before. She set it on the large, bare table she used to prepare food, took a dry cloth and began to wipe the ham free of its white and green mold. When it had aired and its smoked skin had sweated, she would wipe it again, then cut slices for Pauline to fry for supper. Pauline had a nice way with ham, managing to keep it juicy while letting it crisp on the outside.

Myrtis yawned and stood watching Cook work on the ham. She pretended more interest than she felt, because she hoped to be promoted from washwoman to general kitchen helper. Clovis drifted toward the door. Slow movement attracts attention as much as quick movement, so she moved at a carefully calculated normal speed, instinctively slowing it a little because of the lassitude of the day. She did not want Myrtis to ask if she might go with her, or worse, simply to follow without asking.

Clovis had taken from the pantry a clean gallon bucket, the kind used to store cane syrup, and when not required for that, handy for berry picking. The buckets accumulated in the pantry as the syrup was used during the winter and spring and summer, to be filled again when the autumn cane was ground, and its juice boiled to make syrup.

If anyone asked where she was going, she could say she had seen a growth of late-ripening blackberries in the branch and thought she would gather them for a pie. The best lies use truth. There were ripe blackberries in the woods, and if she did not find Floyd and Leon, whose direction she had noted from the kitchen window, then maybe she would gather some of the berries. They’d been red just turning purple when she saw them. They would be ready now.

Because of the heat, and because she had seen the watermelon, she knew they must plan to swim and cool the melon at the same time, so she took the pathway she’d last used when she followed them. But on the way, reflecting that swimming and fishing were seldom done in the same place and that Leon and Floyd’s doing both at the same spot the other day was probably a special circumstance, she veered below the place she had found them before. By swimming below the fishing area their noise and activity would not disturb the fish.