2018.07.12

It's Thursday.

Chapter fourteen: FEVER ‘N’ AGUE

Now blackberries were ripe, and in the hot afternoons Laura went with Ma to pick them. The big, black juicy berries hung thick in brier-patches in the creek bottoms. Some were in the shade of trees and some were in the sun, but the sun was so hot that Laura and Ma stayed in the shade. There were plenty of berries. Deer lay in the shady groves and watched Ma and Laura. Blue jays flew at their sun bonnets and scolded because they were taking the berries. Snakes hurriedly crawled away from them, and in the trees the squirrels woke up and chattered at them. Wherever they went among the scratchy briers, mosquitoes rose up in buzzing swarms. Mosquitoes were thick on the big, ripe berries, sucking the sweet juice. But they liked to bite Laura and Ma as much as they liked to eat blackberries. Laura’s fingers and her mouth were purple-black with berry juice. Her face and her hands and her bare feet were covered with brier scratches and mosquito bites. And they were spattered with purple stains, too, where she had slapped at the mosquitoes. But every day they brought home pails full of berries, and Ma spread them in the sun to dry. Every day they ate all the blackberries they wanted, and the next winter they would have dried blackberries to stew. Mary hardly ever went to pick blackberries. She stayed in the house to mind Baby Carrie, because she was older. In the daytime there were only one or two mosquitoes in the house. But at night, if the wind wasn’t blowing hard, mosquitoes came in thick swarms. On still nights Pa kept piles of damp grass burning all around the house and stable. The damp grass made a smudge of smoke, to keep the mosquitoes away. But a good many mosquitoes came, anyway. Pa could not play his fiddle in the evenings because so many mosquitoes bit him. Mr. Edwards did not come visiting after supper any more, because the mosquitoes were so thick in the bottoms. All night Pat and Petty and the colt and the calf and the cow were stamping and swishing their tails in the stable. And in the morning Laura’s forehead was speckled with mosquito bites. Pa told her that wouldn’t last long because fall was not far away and the first cold wind would settle them.