ONE AFTERNOON. while Tvavis and Sarah

and Pat all slept naked under a blanket of August

heat. Liv took a plastic bucket that once had held

two pounds of Shedd s peanut butter and walked the half

mile to where the road ended at Helen Alden s driveway.

While out walking with her children in June, Liv had

noticed the blackberry bramble so thick with white blos-

som It looked, at a distance, as if it had been snowed on.

She had been waiting since tor the fruit the flowers fore-

told, On first meeting Miss Alden she had asked permis-

sion to pick there. Miss Alden seemed pleased she had

bothered to ask. Most people wouldn t, wild berries on

anyone s property being widely, if not universally, deemed

a kind of free fall to anyone with sufficient initiative to

glean them,

Wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt and jeans to protect

herself from the brambles, never mind the heat. and an old,

straw fedora to shade her face and protect her head from

the sun, she walked down the dusty dirt road listening to

the insects, which seemed to be the only living things

besides herself abroad.