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the fence. “She’s got the chicken pox,” I said.
    Tina was silent for a minute but I could still feel her watching me. It made my skin crawl. “You oughtn’t to mess with that girl,” she said finally. She plucked a thistle and twirled its stalk between her thumb and forefinger. Part of me wanted to ask what she was talking about, but I didn’t. I glanced at her dirty face. She grinned and tickled herself under the chin with the thistle’s prickly head. “Don’t you know about her people? My mamaw said they’re witches. You better watch out. She’ll put a hex on you.”
    I turned away from Tina Cutshaw and stared through the chain link at the silent graves, wishing for her to disappear. I could feel my ears reddening.
    “It’s true,” she said. “Mamaw told me. If you keep hanging around with that girl, you’ll be cursed the rest of your life. All kinds of bad things will happen to you.”
    I should have got up and walked off but somehow I couldn’t move. Then I felt a touch under my chin, a sly tickling. I jerked away and she dropped the thistle in my lap. I pressed my face into the chain link so hard that my cheeks and forehead hurt. “What’s wrong, Doug?” Tina Cutshaw asked. “I can be your girlfriend if you want.”
    After school I walked down the mountain to see Mr. Barnett, chest tightening as I passed the house where I knew Myra was sick in bed. I found Mr. Barnett hammering on his roof, where a storm had blown off some shingles. I waited on the porch until he came down, trying not to think about Tina Cutshaw and the prickle of her thistle’s head.
    “What do you say, Douglas?” Mr. Barnett said, coming around the house with his hammer. He stopped grinning when he saw my face. “Lord have mercy, boy. You look like you done lost your best friend.” I stared down at my shoes, not ready yet to talk.
    He left the hammer on the steps and I followed him across the yard, hands stuffed deep in my coat pockets against the cold. Halfway up the slope, when I still hadn’t spoken, Mr. Barnett asked what was on my mind. “Something happened at school,” I said. I told him about Tina Cutshaw all in a rush, barely stopping to pause for breath. When I was finished, light-headed and dizzy, I waited for him to say it was nonsense. He moved silently under the winter trees, eyes tracking a red bird, until I began to think he wouldn’t respond at all. Then he startled me by saying, “I figured you’d hear it sooner or later. That talk’s been going around ever since Byrdie came here from Chick-weed Holler.” I stopped and stared but he walked on without me. I hurried to catch up.
    “Back when Byrdie and her mama first came to Piney Grove to worship, there was an old busybody in the congregation by the name of Ethel Cox. She had something ill to say about everybody. My mama was in charge of organizing the bake sale that year and she held a meeting at our house. Well, there wasn’t much talk about a bake sale that night. It was stuffy so Mama had opened the windows. I stood outside smoking and heard the whole thing. Big old Ethel got up and said, ‘Before we get started, there’s something important that ort to be addressed.’ She was always trying to sound proper. I peeped in and seen her standing in front of one of the chairs Mama had arranged in a circle, big as a Sherman tank in that flowered dress she wore all thetime. She said, ‘I’m talking about that Pinkston woman and her girl that’s been coming to Sunday morning services. I thought I knew that woman the minute I seen her. I got to talking with my second cousin that lives in Chickweed Holler where the Pinkstons come from, and I figured it out.’ Then she took a big pause. The other ladies was getting restless. It was hot and they was fanning theirselves with paper fans Mama got from the funeral home. I could tell they wished Ethel would get on with it. Ethel said, ‘That woman’s mother is Ruth Bell, one of the Chickweed Holler