Emaline eased her way along the riverbank, her shoes and stockings off, feeling the warm mud between her toes. The river could be a rough place, especially near the hobo jungle. She didn’t see any tramps around, but they had built campfires in the grove and the ground was strewn with empty bean cans, bits of torn clothing, shattered whiskey bottles, even a little booklet soaked in the rain and charred around the edges by the campfire. She picked it up, saw a crude drawing of two popular cartoon figures copulating, tossed it away. She turned her back on the mess, took an old blanket from her basket, spread it on the riverbank, sat on the blanket to watch the river flow. She ate half her sandwich and all of the sweet potato. When she tossed a crust of bread aside, a colony of ants moved in, efficient as engineers. In the distance she could hear traffic on the bridge, but it was peaceful down here. She lay back to rest for a while, watching a hawk circle, a speck in the vault of blue sky. She wondered if they could really see a mouse from so far up, but then the hawk turned into a plunging bullet. When it rose, a small animal struggled in its talons.

She sat up, reached for the jar of corn, dropped a handful of kernels into the water to draw the fish, baited the hook with more of the corn, cast her line. Within an hour she had three small perch and a good-size carp wrapped in a towel in her basket. She ate the second half of her sandwich and drank the rest of the well water she had carted along. She had just finished eating when she saw the huge thunderheads building over the bluff and a curtain of rain approaching the river. She began packing up her things, thinking that she had plenty of time to finish before the rain hit, but the storm was coming fast. She began to walk back to the road, but when lightning struck a tree a hundred feet behind her, she dropped the fishing pole and picnic basket and ran all the way to the bridge. She wanted to slip under the bridge to wait out the storm, but a dozen tramps had beaten her to the spot.

“Hey, little missy!” one of them shouted. “C’mon in here, we always got room for a pretty little gal.”