Uncle Luce sent word from Pigeon Roost that he would come to help gather the crop. Grandma’s bones ached with rheumatism and she was not able to go again to the fields. She sat in the cool of the dogtrot, dreading the sun. We waited through the parching days, pricking our ears to every nag’s heel against a stone in the valley, to the creak of harness and dry-wheel groan of wagons in the creek bed. Field mice fattened in the patches. Heavy orange cups of the trumpet vine bloomed on the cornstalks, and field larks blew dustily from row to row, feeding well where the mice had scattered their greedy harvesting. We waited impatiently for Uncle Luce, knowing that when he came we should hear from Uncle Jolly, and that Uncle Luce would take the mare home for the winter.

“It’s Rilla that’s keeping him away,” Grandma said. “Luce’s woman was always sot agin him doing for his ol’ mommy. I reckon Luce fotched her off too young. She wasn’t nigh sixteen when they married.”

We waited for Uncle Luce until the moon was full in October. The leaves ripened, and the air was bloated with the smell of pawpaws where the black fruit lay rotting upon the ground. ‘Possums came to feed there in the night, and two got into a box trap I set above the barn. We ate one, steeped in gravy, with sweet potatoes. I shut the other in a pen, Grandma saying we would eat it when Uncle Jolly got home. She was lonesome and spoke of him through the days. “I reckon he’s a grain wild and hard-headed,” Grandma said, “but he tuck care of his ol’ mommy.”

One morning Grandma said we could wait no longer for Uncle Luce. She took her grapevine walking stick and we went into the corn field. We worked two days pulling corn from the small hoe-tended stalks. When all the runty ears were gathered she measured them into pokes, pulling her bonnet down over her face to hide the rheumatic pain. There were sixteen bushels. “We won’t be needing the barn this time,,, she said. “We’ll just sack the puny nubbins and put them in the shedroom.”

With the corn in we waited a few days until Grandma’s rheumatism had been doctored with herbs and bitter cherry-bark tea. Then there were the heavy-leaved cabbages, the cushaws and sweet potatoes to be gathered. The potatoes had grown large that year. They were fat and big as squashes. Grandma crawled along the rows on her knees, digging in the baked earth with her hands. It was good to see such fine potatoes. “When Jolly comes home he’ll shore eat a bellyful,” she said.