‘Mr Bodine told Pappy…’

‘Well, maybe he did, but he’s got no call to be a-tellen any such. I need every berry I got to make my own jam. I need every last one for my own self. Don’t come up this way a-picken any more. You keep down along the branch nohow. I got no berries or anything else to spare.’

Ellen went down the field feeling her dress pushed against her skin, shoving her along, the look of the woman and the voice of the woman shoving at her clothing, her clothing shoving at her skin and making her bones articulate stiffly. Her mind stood blank and motionless while nerves and limbs came stiffly down the hill. ‘Oh, Brother Andrew, have you got a G string,’ stood in her throat, contending to be said, but against this arose and fought other sayings. Her bare feet walked on stunted wild clover and struggling crab grass, and the little stones were hot like cinders on her skin. She passed the last blackberry bush saying, ‘Weep, weep, weep no more. Only ten cents more and I’ll read the other palm for you, Lady, only ten cents, one dime, ten cents.’ A nausea spread up from the pit of her stomach and died in her mouth, diffused. ‘And you’ll live a long and happy life. Only ten cents more, one dime. A long life, a happy life, a long life. Happy happy long long. Long and happy life.’ She was walking on cooler grass near the foot of the hill, and the grasshoppers splattered away from her feet. The woman stood crisp on the top of the pasture, gathering her berries, still pushing with her look and with her shape, up in the sun. At the clump of thorn bushes beyond the last rise Ellen dropped quickly to her knees and crawled quickly out of the sight of the woman on the hilltop. Sitting under the leaves of the thornbush she felt little prickers tingling along her skin. Lice, she thought it must be, her lice crawling, stirred up and going about. She drew her legs under her skirt and sat, the thorns of the bush worrying her neck and her moving hands. She was pushed up from the thorny grass, but she peered out at the hill from which she had been driven and saw with a quick sob that she was well concealed. Then she crawled down to the branch and went secretly over the water gap, intent on being unseen. The ground was rough and hot, scraping meanly at her as she clung to it.

‘She thought I lied to her,’ she said, sitting by the water of the creek. ‘She thought I was a-stealen her berries. I could steal all she’s got and she’d never know, if I was of a mind to. I could get all she’s got some night if I’d set my mind that way. I’m not afeared of her old shepherd dog. He’d come up and rub his neck on my leg and I’d scratch his head for him a little. I know about everything she does, in and out of her big ugly house, a-planten her late cabbage one day and a-putten up jam the next, with Pappy to cut her stovewood. I got no lice on me. A-goen off in her buggy and a-comen back with big bundles. I could take all the blackberries she’s got and she’d never know when.’