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Some fishermen came around her and when she named Billy Floyd they nodded their heads. They said, what with the rains, they waited for the racing of the waters to slow down, but that he went out on them. They said he was out on them now, but would come back to the camp, if he did not turn over and drown first. She asked the fishermen to let her wait there with them, since it was to them that he would return. They said it did not matter to them how long she waited, or where.

She stood by the nets. A little distance away men and women were cooking and eating and she smelled the fish and the wild meat. The river went by immeasurable under the sky, moving and dimly catching and snagging itself, freeing itself without effort, heavy with its great waves of drift, deep with stirring fish.

But after a certain length of time, the men that had been throwing knives at the tree by the last light put her inside a grounded houseboat on the plank of which chickens were standing. The willow branches hung down over and dragged softly back and forth across the roof. There were noises and fires all around. There were pigs in the wood.

One by one the men came in to her. She actually spoke to the first one that entered between the dozing chickens, for now she could speak to everyone, in a vague stir of welcome or in the humility that moved now deep in her spirit. About them all and closer to them than their own breath was the smell of trees that had bled to the knives they wore.

When she called out, she did not call any name; it was a cry with a rising sound, as if she said "Go back," or asked a question, and then at the last protested. A rude laugh covered her cry, and somehow both the harsh human sounds could easily have been heard as rejoicing, going out over the river in the dark night. By the fire, little boys were slapped crossly by their mothers—as if they knew that the original smile now crossed Jenny's face, and hung there no matter what was done to her, like a bit of color that kindles in the sky after the light has gone.

"Is she asleep? Is she in a spell? Or is she dead?" asked a little old bright-eyed woman who went and looked in the door, and crept up to the now meditating men outside. She was so precise in her question that she even held up three rheumatic fingers when she asked.

"She's waiting for Billy Floyd," they said.

The old woman nodded, and nodded out to the flowing river, with the firelight following her face and showing its dignity. The younger boys separated and took their turns throwing knives with a dull pit at the tree.

The Golden Apples

1949

To Rosa Farrar Wells and Frank Hallam Lyell

Main Families in Morgana, Mississippi

King MacLain

Mrs. MacLain (nee Miss Snowdie Hudson)

Ran and Eugene

Comus Stark

Mrs. Stark (nee Miss Lizzie Morgan)

Jinny Love

Wilbur Morrison

Mrs. Morrison

Cassie and Loch

Mr. Carmichael

Mrs. Carmichael (Miss Nell)

Nina

Felix Spights

Mrs. Spights (Miss Billy Texas)

Woodrow, Missie, and Little Sister

Old Man Moody

Mrs. Moody (Miss Jefferson)

Parnell

Miss Perdita Mayo

Miss Hattie Mayo

Fate Raineey

Mrs. Fate Rainey (Miss Katie)

Victor and Virgie

Also Loomises, Carlyles, Holifields, Nesbitts, Bowleses

Sissums and Sojourners.

Also Plez, Louella, and Tellie Morgan; Elberta, Twosie,

and Exum McLane; Blackstone and Juba, colored.

The town of Morgana and the county of MacLain, Mississippi, are fictitious; all their inhabitants, as well as the characters placed in San Francisco, and their situations are products of the author's imagination and are not intended to portray real people or real situations.

SHOWER OF GOLD

That was Miss Snowdie MacLain.

She comes after her butter, won't let me run over with it from just across the road. Her husband walked out of the house one day and left his hat on the banks of the Big Black River.—That could have started something, too.

We might have had a little run on doing that in Morgana, if it had been so willed. What King did, the copy-cats always might do. Well, King MacLain