There is nothing else she can say. She opens the door and is almost gone when she remembers something. The slip of paper the dummy had in his pocket. She stops a moment, considering. Part of her says to leave it lie, to stop messing around in whats none of her business. But theres another part of her too.

She goes back to the couch where James Grierson sits.

One more thing, she says and hands him the slip of paper. Can you read this?

He looks at it.

What does it mean? he says.

Out loud, she says. Can you read it out loud?

Why?

Just . . . a favour, okay?

He looks at it again and recites:

Hello! My name is Maury and I wouldnt hurt a fly. My grandmother loves me and wishes she could take care of me for ever, but shes most likely gone now. I have family out west. If you find me, will you take me to them? God bless you!

Jeb and Jeanie Duchamp

442 Hamilton Street

Point Comfort, TX

Doggone it, she says.

And in this way the paths narrow for the tempters of fate. She thinks of Malcolm, of the iron giant, the edifices of lost men, the boiling in her belly more wicked than fiend or meatskin. The voice of God speaking with colours that are not hers.

She should have left it alone.

She sighs.

All right then, she says. You want to read me that address one more time?

Part Two

Eight

SHE PICKS from eight in the morning until ten, stopping sometimes to stand up and straighten out her back. She looks across the fields to the spot where Maury stands chopping the wood like she taught him to. His large frame hunches over the stump where he places the tree rounds and raises the axe over his head and brings it down steady but not swift, putting the whole gravity of his mineral self into the gesture. She wipes the sweat from her forehead and fans herself with the panama hat and looks at the wide-open sky, the biggest sky shes ever seen it curls around at the horizon and almost comes back to meet itself.

When she fills a tub with the berries, she brings it to the shack in the middle of the fenced property and sets it on the porch. Then she goes back out into the fields. Five times she does this, setting the little tubs in a row.

This is a no-count business, she says to Albert, the freckled man sitting on a wicker chair in the shade of the porch.

I told you it werent gonna be easy.

He sips something from a plastic tumbler.

What you drinkin? she says.

Lemonade. Fresh squeezed. I might could give you a glass when youre done.

She looks at the glass in the mans dried-up hand.

Yeah, all right. Im just takin a breather. Say, what you need all them bingberries for anyway?