I ran along the rows with a willow basket, piling it full and spreading the potatoes in the sun to sweeten. Once I ran into a bull nettle, and it was like fire burning my bare legs. I scratched and whimpered. Grandma took a twist of tobacco out of her apron, chewed a piece for a few minutes, and rubbed the juice on the fiery flesh. “You hain’t big as a tick,” she said, “but you’re a right smart help to your ol’ granny.”

The days shortened. The air grew frosty. Nights were loud with honking geese, and suddenly the leaves were down before gusts of wind. The days were noisy with blowing, and the house filled with the sound of crickets’ thighs. There were no birds in the bare orchard, not even the small note of a chewink through the days.

Before frost fell we went to Grandma’s flower bed in a corner of the garden and picked the dry seeds. We broke off the brown heads of old maids and the smooth buttons of Job’s tears hanging on withered stalks.

“There’s enough tears for a pretty string of beads,” Grandma said, “and enough seed left for planting.”

Later we pulled and bundled the fodder in the field, stripping the patches for the mare in her dark stall. “If Luce don’t come, Poppet is going to starve before the winter goes out,” Grandma said. “It’s Rilla hating me that keeps him from coming. Oh, she’ll larn all her children to grow up hating their ol’ granny.”

Uncle Luce came after the first frost. He came whistling up the path from Dry Neck with the icy stones crackling under his feet. Since the gathering, Grandma had been in bed with rheumatism in her back, getting up only to cook. Uncle Luce was full of excuses. Rilla was sick. It was getting near her time. His four daughters had had chicken pox. “I’m hoping and praying the next one will be a boy-child,” Luce said. “A day’s coming when I’ll need help with my crap. Girls hain’t fitten to grub stumps and hold a plow in the ground.”

Grandma noticed Uncle Luce’s hands were blackened with resin and asked if he’d been logging. “I had to scratch a little something to buy medicine for Rilla,” he said. “My crap never done nothing this year. Planted late, and never got the proper seasoning. I reckon I’ll be buying bread before spring.”

“I was reckoning you’d take the mare home for the winter,” Grandma said. “I was thinking you could ride her back to Pigeon Roost.”