‘Them-there mules is a-haven a good time if they only knowed it,’ Ben said.

‘There is a place on a road down past somewheres in Tennessee where a little house stands off in bushes and trees, a lamp a-shinen out one the windows, after sundown. A youngone is a-cryen little tired cries. You cross a bridge, a rocky road and a little up-hill way to go, I recollect, and then the house and a tired little child a-cryen for to be put to bed. It’s a sweet sound, now. You want to take it up in arms and put it in its little place.’

‘They’ll go a long piece past Tennessee, them mules, and they’ll never see another such a time, a-eaten their fill and a-doen not one God’s thing all day.’

‘Or you hear music come down the road and you run as fast as your long legs can take you to catch up with it, and there he is, a foreigner, dark almost like a – like a black man, but straight hair and a different smell. And a-hangen on the front of him is a music box and down in the road is a little monkey with a coat and a cap on, a-looken for all the world like a man, long fingernails and all, a-scratchen his head and his leg, just like a man, his little old nose and his big mouth. And his forehead a-frownen down on the people and a-looken up at the sky like he was a-searchen it out for something, looken out from under his eyes to try and see.’

Ragged hens went about the barnyard to pluck at the scattered corn. The despoiled cock walked unevenly down the yard, his tail feathers gone, plucking aside the hens he had fed in the spring. An odour of drying tobacco came across the pasture. Henry had cut the last of the crop and had hauled it on a slide to the tobacco barn over in the farm where the cut plants hung yellowing now, filling the entire building. Ellen had seen the plants hanging from the sticks, great inverted yellow waves, for she had been to the barn the day before. ‘Not very good quality,’ Mr Al said, turning away from the barn door. She felt the sting of the grains of corn through the rough glove she had made to protect her right hand and she saw Ben’s bony old hand reaching for another ear. Ben was dark yellow fading away to brown. His little beard grew in knots of spiral hairs. He had a dirty rag tied around his throat and his shoulders seemed strangely knotted as he bent over the corn. Out of his wavering, double-jointed voice came a scurry of words:

‘And he says “Who’s that-there fine looken gal you see out after the turkeys?”’

‘Who said?’

‘A white man said it, a nice fine fellow. He says, “Who’s that-there fine looken gal over at Wakefield’s?”’

‘Quit a-foolen, Uncle Ben. I don’t believe e’er word of it.’