"You." Granma addressed Andrew, the child. "Go in and wash your face. This isn't Texas, we do not behave like Indians in the South."

All right. A take-charge person. That's exactly what I'd hoped to find at the end of the road-someone with the strength left to know what to do.

"You two, start picking," Granma ordered.

Brad looked at me. "Does she mean us?"

"Picking what?" I asked.

"Strawberries!" Granma glowered with her hawk eyes. "I'm coming off the line, someone has to go on."

I stepped out of Moby d.i.c.k into the sunlight, thinking maybe the old lady had cataracts in her eyes and hadn't noticed my bruises. "I'm not in very good shape to be picking crops," I said.

Granma was clearly disgusted. "You're at least sixty years younger than I am. If I can pick, you can pick."

"But-"

"Don't but me, little missy."

From the ambulance, Shane's voice rose in an erotic fever. "Mount it, little missy. My rod's hot as a firecracker."

A very black man named Patrick gave us each a wooden frame that held six quart baskets. He looked at my face and sort of recoiled. "What happened to you?"

"I fell down."

Patrick studied me a moment, then nodded, either satisfied with the explanation or figuring it was none of his business. "We pay twenty-five cents a quart. Fill them to overflowing. If I find any rocks or soft strawberries, you don't get paid for that quart."

"How do we pick them?" Brad asked.

Patrick spit. "The row on the end is yours. You'll have to hurry to catch up."

Just like that-Zip-I became a farmer. What would my father do if he knew I was picking fruit off bushes? He'd laugh so hard he would fall off his horse, that's what he would do. Hank Elkrunner would adopt that sly Blackfoot smirk and innocently say, "Farming suits you, Maurey. Puts color in your cheeks." Then he would fall off his horse. Lydia Callahan would throw some ironic twist on the deal, like "We all end up being what we fear most," and Sam Callahan would ask, "What's the difference between ranching and farming?" The cluck.

Me, I was almost too tired to be embarra.s.sed. Brad and I stood over our first strawberry plant, staring down at it the way you stare at fairly exotic and smelly food your mom is making you eat. Four little black kids-who I was later to learn were all sons and daughters of Patrick-were forty or fifty feet ahead of us, picking their way across the field. Since Brad and I shared a row, theoretically anyway, we should be able to catch them somewhere along the horizon.

"You think they're good to eat?" Brad asked.

"Try one."

He bent over and tasted a strawberry. "They're just like the strawberries in the stores."

"What'd you expect?" I still hadn't moved on my first berry.

"I don't know, I thought they treated them with chemicals or something."

I looked over at the yellow house. In the backyard, sheets and pillowcases hung limply from a clothesline that was looped around these pulley deals so a person standing on the screened-in porch could reel in the wash. I don't know how Wyoming women dried clothes in the olden days before electricity. Some years we'll go four months without cracking thirty-two degrees.

"So, what'd I say the other night to p.i.s.s you off so bad?" I asked.

"We better pick. I don't want that lady mad at me."

Getting the strawberries off the plants was easy-you pinch the stem and pull-but the bending over, straightening up, moving the quart baskets, and bending over again was agony-on-parade for my back and ribs. Let's not forget I'd been stomped recently.

Brad was picking two or three plants ahead, with his back to me, when he said, "You told me my drawings stunk and I was no better than my father."

I stopped work. "I was drunk, Brad. I'm sorry, sometimes when I'm drunk I say mean things that aren't true. You are a very talented artist and you're nothing at all like your father. Maybe I was talking about me and my father. Whatever I said was a lie."

He turned profile, still not looking at me. "That's not what you said the other night. You said when you drink you tell the truth, and when you're sober you're afraid to be honest."

Had I said that? I looked at the strawberry in my hand. "It's the other way around, Brad."

"I don't get it. Freedom was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d all the time, but you're nice to me when you haven't been drinking and a real stoolhead when you have. Which is the real you?"

"They're both the real me." I made it to my feet. "Sometimes when I love people I treat them badly so they'll have an excuse to go away."

At the word love, a strange look crossed his angel face. He glanced at me, then back at the red dirt. "Why?"

I shrugged. "I guess I'd rather drive them off than get left. h.e.l.l, I don't know. I don't a.n.a.lyze why I do the c.r.a.p I do."

Brad didn't say anything for a while. Grown-up approach-and-flee behavior must be confusing to a kid. I know it's confusing to me. Finally Brad asked, "Does that mean you love me?"

I took a deep breath. "Sure, I love you."

Brad turned to look at me. Lord knows what he thought. He probably hadn't run into much love before and hadn't realized how people who feel it hurt each other. He shook his head side to side. "Beats me," he said.

"Beats me, too."

He gave me an uncertain smile. "Whichever is the real you, I'm not buying her any more Yukon Jack."

"How'd you enjoy picking strawberries?" Lloyd asked that evening at supper.

I glared with all the venom I could muster, but it wasn't enough for him to notice. He kept b.u.t.tering his corn and salting his okra. Delilah Talbot was right about the South and vegetables. Outside of Thanksgiving and Christmas, I never sat at a western table with more than one non-potato vegetable. Down south they eat more vegetables than beef. The part of meals I don't approve of in North Carolina is the pre-sugared iced tea. I think people deserve a choice, but southerners say sugar won't dissolve right unless you dump it in when the tea's hot. Dothan Talbot and I used to go round and round on the subject and, other than one more excuse to hate each other, nothing was ever decided.

"You make much money this afternoon?" Lloyd asked.

"I made seven dollars, and Maurey came in with three fifty," Brad said. "She had three quarts disqualified for soft strawberries."

n.o.body had noticed I was giving them the silent treatment, so I blew it off. I said, "That's for five hours' work. Three dollars fifty cents for five hours is cheaper than slavery."

"Amos made thirty-six dollars," Brad said. Amos was eleven years old and a show-off. The only good thing about him was he sang Stevie Wonder songs while he worked.

Marcella brought in a bowl of field peas, which you have to be from the South to tell from black-eyed peas. Andrew had been fed earlier and sent outside to play. Hugo Jr. was asleep in the same crib Shane used to sleep in. Isn't that amazing?

"Where were you hiding all day?" I asked Lloyd. "We could have used another hand in the field of h.e.l.l."

Lloyd's eyes were worn out. It must be rough when the person who saved you goes down. Even though Shane seemed dependent on Lloyd, my guess is that need stuff flowed both ways. "Granma sent me out to inventory the barn."

"The cur what's-his-name burnt it down."

"Ashley Montagu," Marcella said.

"Wasn't that the guy in Gone With the Wind?"

Marcella poured milk from a gla.s.s milk pitcher. "Wilkes. The guy in Gone With the Wind was Ashley Wilkes."

"She wants the barn rebuilt," Lloyd said. "I went through to see if there's anything worth keeping and what it would take to clear the foundation."

"Did you ever do any carpentry?" I asked.

He shrugged his bare shoulders. "She just needs to know what's out there. I won't be here to drive the nails."

"Where is Granma, anyway?" I asked. "She's pa.s.sing up a chance to criticize us."

Even though I hadn't asked, Marcella cut me another chunk of ham. "She's with Shane and the doctor. Dr. Keller drove out after his regular office closed for the day." Marcella smiled. "When you're ninety, doctors still make house calls."

Brad couldn't believe it. "That lady is ninety?"

I said, "Shane hates doctors. He'd never allow one to touch him." We'd tried to drag him off to a doctor in Chattanooga that morning and he'd thrown a Shane fit-threatened to make all our lives miserable if we didn't take him straight home.

"He didn't have much choice this time," Lloyd said. "Granma's in charge."

Brad got up with his dishes. "Now that I've met Granma, I'm not so certain Ashley Montagu was a cur."

Lloyd said, "You're starting to talk like Maurey."

I took that as a compliment.

After supper I carried my coffee out on the front porch to watch the light change. Hank Elkrunner once told me you can't go crazy if you take the time each day to sit quietly and watch the sun come up and go down. I'd almost as soon go crazy as wake up for sunrise, but I've found half the deal helps a lot.

Andrew waved at me from across the yard. He'd made it his personal mission to knock down the birdbath, which meant running as hard as he could and hurling himself into the base. He wasn't having any effect on the birdbath, but he had managed to scare away the birds.

I felt drained. It had been almost twenty-four hours since I drank anything alcoholic, and that was only a juice gla.s.s of Scotch, but I didn't feel the usual knot in my stomach and nail in my spine. My spine hurt, sure, but that was from being kicked. Maybe one pain blew away the other pain. The physical symptoms when you want a drink and can't have one are way different from the physical symptoms when you don't want a drink. In the end, the addiction wins either way, but that first forty-eight hours or so, mental att.i.tude has a major influence on physical discomfort. So to speak. As it were.

The screen door banged and Marcella came out to stand next to me and watch Andrew climb the birdbath. She was wearing a sweater, which is what people from warm climates do when the temperature dips below seventy. Somehow, Andrew had gotten his feet up in the basin and was hanging upside down by his heels, hollering for help. Neither one of us took it seriously enough to leave the porch.

"The doctor is still with Shane," Marcella said.

"How's it look?"

She used her hands to pull her hair behind her ears. "You know doctors, they won't tell you anything until they're ready. Shane's awake, anyway, he's not delirious anymore."

Some kind of cricket or locust or something we don't have back home started buzz sawing in the trees. That's the kind of noise, if you're raised on it, you find comforting, but if you're not, it gives you the w.i.l.l.i.e.s. Marcella hugged her elbows with her hands and stared up the road toward the tracks. I turned to check out what she was watching and saw the Oldsmobile.

"Let him come in," I said.

Marcella rocked back a few inches. "Are you sure?"

"It's time to forgive. Hugo's had enough."

"But you said throw him out on his a.s.s."

It was my turn to be taken back. "Marcella, I'm amazed. A week ago you'd have choked if you tried to say a.s.s."

She blushed from the neck. "You said never forgive a man who fools around."

"I changed my mind."

"One of the reasons I've been so strong with him is because I'm trying to be more like you."

"Oh, Lord, Marcella, don't do that."

Andrew fell off the birdbath on his head. He rolled over and got up shaky, then he kicked the stone, which hurt his foot so he had to sit down again.

"You think it can ever be the same between me and Hugo?" Marcella asked.

Watching Andrew and being sober made me ache for Auburn more than ever. "It can't be the same, but you can make it okay."

Marcella walked across the yard and lifted Andrew onto the birdbath. He stood with a foot on each side of the rim, his arms held high, and shouted, "King of the mountain."

Marcella looked back at me and said, "About Armand. It wasn't all your fault. He fooled me at first, too, and I wasn't even drunk."

"Thanks."

She smiled, then turned and walked up the driveway toward the Oldsmobile.

46.

Lloyd sat on a couch in the living room, watching television and eating frozen grapefruit juice from the can with a spoon. It was odd, seeing him on regular furniture, watching regular television. I'd never connected Lloyd to normal things people do.

"It's called Bridget Loves Bernie," he said, gesturing at the TV with his spoon. "One's Jewish and one's Catholic, and their parents can't adjust."

I sat in an antique rocker that would have been great for nursing babies. It creaked gently as I leaned back. "Which one is Jewish?"

"Bernie, I think. That's more a Jewish name."