She came over and rummaged in the bags, retrieved a yellow onion. She peeled it intently, poured some salt from a can and sprinkled it over the white flesh. Her eyes rolled and flashed as she chewed. Tears started to well in my eyes. I moved to the door.

“Got any peanut butter?” Sam asked as he reentered. “Any jam? Cookies? Got anything good to eat?”

“Candy bars in the bottom of the bag.”

He emptied it onto the counter and took out a candy bar. Carlotta sat in the doorway again, her legs spread. One bare foot was in the dust and the other outside.

“I had to give up eating chocolate. It makes me sweat a lot and I get zits.” She gnawed the onion.

“I hear you got a job.”

Sam stripped the wrapper from the chocolate and nodded.

“I’m an apprentice pipe mender for five hours a day, three days a week at Dunhill’s. It pays one hundred dollars a week and all I’ve done so far is get stuff off shelves and stir the glue pot. My boss is this very old man, Mr. Zendke, who is so clever, in his way. He’s like Geppetto or somebody. He thinks pipes have personalities, like the people who smoke them. He says when they’re sold they’re innocent as babies, with a certain genetic potential. That’s from what they’re made of and how they’re made. Then the way they are treated makes them grow up into good pipes or bad pipes. He doesn’t say it quite that way, but that’s what he means. He can tell all about people by looking at their pipes. Like, some people keep bringing in pipes with the bits snapped off. He says they have bad tempers, no self-control. The people who just gradually chew holes in the bits are tense, under a lot of pressure. He doesn’t like people who smoke aromatic tobacco. He says they’re fakes. The same sort who spend a thousand dollars on hunting equipment just so they can go drink in the woods away from their wives. Not really interested in the thing, you see, but using it as an excuse for some other thing they can’t mention. Mr. Zendke is also very fond of banana malteds. Every day for lunch, I bring him one from a place down the street that knows how he likes it.”

Carlotta threw the topknot of the onion into the long grass. The sun bounced white and hot off her black hair. She eased farther down on the doorjamb and the zipper of her pants slid open. She placed her hands over her belly. “I want to plant tomatoes today.”

“That’s right.” Sam flicked the candy wrapper into the sink. To me, “You want to help?”

“I’ll just watch. I have black thumbs.”

Carlotta turned sharply toward me, scowling. “What’s that?”