“Aye,” Roland said, although that was not the entire truth. He wouldn’t tell them what he now understood to be the entire truth until they needed to know it.

Next came the taters. Sarey Adams got hers at forty yards, clipped it at fifty, and missed entirely at sixty; her dish sailed high. She uttered a curse that was far from ladylike, then walked head-down to the side of the privy. Here she sat to watch the rest of the competition. Roland went over and sat beside her. He saw a tear trickling from the corner of her left eye and down her wind-roughened cheek.

“I’ve let ye down, stranger. Say sorry.”

Roland took her hand and squeezed it. “Nay, lady, nay. There’ll be work for you. Just not in the same place as these others. And you may yet throw the dish.”

She gave him a wan smile and nodded her thanks.

Eddie put more sharproot “heads” on the stuffy-guys, then a radish on top of each. The latter were all but concealed in the shadows thrown by the gunnysack hoods. “Good luck, girls,” he said. “Better you than me.” Then he stepped away.

“Start from ten yards this time!” Roland called.

At ten, they all hit. And at twenty. At thirty yards, Susannah threw her plate high, as Roland had instructed her to do. He wanted one of the Calla women to win this round. At forty yards, Zalia Jaffords hesitated too long, and the dish she flung chopped the sharproot head in two rather than the radish sitting on top.

“Fuck-commala!”she cried, then clapped her hands to her mouth and looked at Callahan, who was sitting on the back steps. That fellow only smiled and waved cheerfully, affecting deafness.

She stamped over to Eddie and Jake, blushing to the tips of her ears and furious. “Ye must tell him to give me another chance, say will ya please,” she told Eddie. “I can do it, I know I can do it—”

Eddie put a hand on her arm, stemming the flood. “He knows it, too, Zee. You’re in.”

She looked at him with burning eyes, lips pressed so tightly together they were almost gone. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “You could pitch for the Mets, darlin.”

Now it was down to Margaret and Rosalita. They both hit the radishes at fifty yards. To Jake, Eddie murmured: “Buddy, I would have told you that was impossible if I hadn’t just seen it.”

At sixty yards, Margaret Eisenhart missed cleanly. Rosalita raised her plate over her right shoulder—she was a lefty—hesitated, then screamed “Riza!” and threw. Sharp-eyed though he was, Roland wasn’t entirely sure if the plate’s edge clipped the side of the radish or if the wind toppled it over. In either case, Rosalita raised her fists over her head and shook them, laughing.

“Fair-day goose! Fair-day goose!” Margaret began calling. The others joined in. Soon even Callahan was chanting.