“Is there another planing mill?”
“No, ma’am. There’s some sawmills, a right smart of them, though.”
She watches him. “They told me back down the road that he worked for the planing mill.”
“I dont know of any here by that name,” Byron says. “I dont recall none named Burch except me, and my name is Bunch.”
She continues to watch him with that expression not so much concerned for the future as suspicious of the now. Then she breathes. It is not a sigh: she just breathes deeply and quietly once. “Well,” she says. She half turns and glances about, at the sawn boards, the stacked staves. “I reckon I’ll set down a while. It’s right tiring, walking over them hard streets from town. It seems like walking out here from town tired me more than all that way from Alabama did.” She is moving toward
