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emerged. “May’s mad at you,” she said. “Guess why.” When I didn’t answer, she said, “May says you should have told her Jake was here. She says you don’t have the sense of a flea.”
    Uncle Nate ran by waving his stick. “Hold on!” he yelled. “Wait on up!”
    â€œWhat are you chasing?” Bonnie called.
    â€œMy Redbird—look at her go!”
    â€œDoes he really see her?” Bonnie asked.
    â€œMaybe—”
    â€œDo you ever see her?”
    â€œIn my mind—” I admitted.
    â€œBut around here, do you see Aunt Jessie like Uncle Nate sees her?”
    I wanted to be able to say yes. If he could see her, why couldn’t I? “Nope, I don’t. Do you?”
    â€œOf course not, but Ben does,” she said. “Ben said he’s seen Aunt Jessie twice since she was buried. Does he really? Or is he imagining it?”
    Later, I found Ben sitting at the foot of his squirt garden, tilting his head to left and right. “Are they straight?” he asked. “Doesn’t that third plant look a little crooked?”
    â€œThey’re fine, Ben. Don’t have to be exactly straight.”
    â€œYes they do.” Ben had decided to grow only beans in his garden, and he was very particular about his row. He liked it to be straight, and he would not allow any weeds whatsoever to grow in it. He checked it two or three times a day, and if he found a little weed trying to sprout up, he’d yell at it, “Where’d you come from? Get on out of there!”
    Once, when Ben was much younger, he told Aunt Jessie that he wanted “the other kind of beans” too.
    â€œWhat kind is that?” Aunt Jessie said.
    â€œHuman beans.”
    Aunt Jessie explained that it was human beings , not human beans . Ben listened carefully and said, “But maybe it really is human beans . Maybe if you took a little human egg and put it in the ground and watered it, it might grow.”
    â€œInto what?” Aunt Jessie asked.
    â€œA human bean, of course.”
    Ben asked if I was going up to my trail.
    â€œYes,” I said, “but don’t tell anyone.”
    â€œIt must be getting long, Zinny,” he said. “What about when it gets five or ten miles long and you have to walk five or ten miles out there just to start clearing and then you’ll have to walk five or ten miles back? And what about when it gets to be fifteen miles? Or sixteen? Or—”
    â€œI’ll manage,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about that potential problem, and I wished he hadn’t mentioned it, because I would worry about it all day.
    Ben said, “Maybe you’ll run into Uncle Nate up there. He’s visiting his sweetheart.”
    â€œIs not.”
    â€œIs too, Zinny. That’s what he said—‘Guess I’ll go see my sweetheart.’”
    â€œHe’s joking.”
    â€œIs not.”
    â€œBen, have you seen Aunt Jessie—recently?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œWhere? What was she doing?”
    He poked at the dirt. “Up by the barn, just walking.”
    â€œShe see you? She say anything?”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œMaybe you imagined it,” I said.
    â€œI did not imagine it.” He didn’t seem at all bothered. In his nine-year-old mind, he thought it perfectly reasonable to see his dead aunt wandering through the farmyard.
    I went on up to the trail, and as I cleared away weeds, I wondered if it were really possible to see a dead person, and felt terribly jealous that both Uncle Nate and Ben had seen her, but I hadn’t. Maybe I hadn’t looked hard enough. To be able to see her—oh! It gave me the shivers just thinking of it. To see her face, to see her walk in that funny way of hers—slow then fast, slow then fast—oh!
    As I neared the barn on my way home, Ben joined me, and we saw Jake’s truck leaving. “Again?” Ben