“Florrie loves roses,” I said. “She grows them rambling roses all over the front porch. But I like weeds best. They’re all wild and tangled up.”

He grinned. “I like weeds, too. Whole big fields of ironweed.”

When we finished in the cornfield, I sat down and stuck out my legs. The dust was high up on my calves and gritty between my toes.

“Aint time yet to git the cows,” I said. “Let’s go fishing.”

Albion was the only boy I knew who apologized to the fish he caught. He smiled at the first tug on the line, took an uneasy pleasure in hauling in his catch, then crooned, “Poor thing,” at the fish flopping on the line. Once he caught a fish that had swallowed the hook and bled from the mouth. He cried out and dropped it.

“Kill it! Hit’s a-suffering terrible! Wont you do something, Carrie?”

I tugged, but the hook was caught solid. “Lay it out and it will die by and by,” I said. But he was still upset and fretted so about the pain it was in that I began to cry. I pulled again and the hook came out with another gush of blood. I tossed the fish back into the river and it swam feebly away, trailing a pink stream behind it. I wiped my slimy hands on my overalls.

“Maybe hit will live,” I said.

He told me I was brave, brave enough for ten men, and I felt better. It was clear to me now that he wasn’t Heathcliff. But I liked him anyway.

We fished a lot that summer, and swam in Grapevine, and called the cows home in the gentle evenings. Albion and I became inseparable. I even coaxed him into starting school in August when the corn was laid by. He expected his father in October, he said. There was no sense in starting school. Ben promised he would be reading by then. Still he was reluctant, until I pointed out that if he didn’t go to school we wouldn’t have nearly so much time together. He agreed then.

“I dont reckon I’d mind learning to read the Bible,” he admitted. “I heard it read out loud and hit sounded fine.”

One day after school in late August we walked the creek, our dinner pails filled with apples we had gathered along the way. Aunt Becka had promised to bake apple pies. The rocks were slippery beneath our bare feet and we fell often, usually on purpose, and sat down backwards in the middle of the stream. Sometimes we spilt our pails and chased the apples down little waterfalls on our hands and knees. We managed to salvage most of them, and swung full pails as we followed the path that skirted the cornfield and crossed the fallow field behind the barn.

Then we heard a distant cry of “Mad dog! Mad dog!”

We froze and Albion clutched my arm.