Ma said, “I’m warnin’ you, mister.
If she comes back, I ain’t to be trusted.
I’ll hit her.”
He smiled wryly.
“I know how you feel,” he said. “But just try not to.
That’s all I ask—just try not to.” He walked slowly away toward the tent where Mrs. Sandry had been carried.
Ma went into the tent and sat down beside Rose of Sharon.
“Look up,” she said.
The girl lay still.
Ma gently lifted the blanket from her daughter’s face. “That woman’s kinda crazy,” she said. “Don’t you believe none of them things.”
Rose of Sharon whispered in terror,
“When she said about burnin’, I—felt burnin’.”
“That ain’t true,” said Ma.
“I’m tar’d out,” the girl whispered. “I’m tar’d a things happenin’.
I wanta sleep. I wanta sleep.”
“Well, you sleep, then.
This here’s a nice place.
You can sleep.”
“But she might come back.”
“She won’t,” said Ma. “I’m a-gonna set right outside, an’ I won’t let her come back.
Res’ up now, ’cause you got to get to work in the nu’sery purty soon.”
Ma struggled to her feet and went to sit in the entrance to the tent.
She sat on a box and put her elbows on her knees and her chin in her cupped hands.
She saw the movement in the camp, heard the voices of the children, the hammering of an iron rim; but her eyes were staring ahead of her.
Pa, coming back along the road, found her there, and he squatted near her.
She looked slowly over at him.
“Git work?” she asked.
“No,” he said, ashamed. “We looked.”
“Where’s Al and John and the truck?”
“Al’s fixin’ somepin.
Had ta borry some tools.
Fella says Al got to fix her there.”
Ma said sadly,
“This here’s a nice place.
We could be happy here awhile.”
“If we could get work.”
“Yeah!
If you could get work.”
He felt her sadness, and studied her face.
“What you a-mopin’ about?
If it’s sech a nice place why have you got to mope?”
She gazed at him, and she closed her eyes slowly.
“Funny, ain’t it. All the time we was a-movin’ an’ shovin’, I never thought none. An’ now these here folks been nice to me, been awful nice; an’ what’s the first thing I do?
I go right back over the sad things—that night Grampa died an’ we buried him.
I was all full up of the road, and bumpin’ and movin’, an’ it wasn’t so bad.
But now I come out here, an’ it’s worse now.
An’ Granma—an’ Noah walkin’ away like that!
Walkin’ away jus’ down the river. Them things was part of all, an’ now they come a-flockin’ back. Granma a pauper, an’ buried a pauper.
That’s sharp now.
That’s awful sharp.