He shuffled uncertainly, hearing her words slowly. “Come on now, Stiggins,” she said.
She turned about and went toward Hill Street, Stiggins following after her a few steps. It was the hour when the street-lights were not yet lit and the people who passed were gray undistinguished motions drifting unevenly through the fog of the first-dark. Now and then as she went she called to Stiggins and was assured that he was following by his shuffling uneven steps that quickened at each cry. She went to Lethe’s cabin and knocked at the door, and at Americy’s call she went inside, passing swiftly over the threshold. Stig remained on the doorstep staring, but after a moment he crouched in the doorway. Americy brought a chair to the middle of the floor and offered it without a greeting. Then she went to sit on the bed, her accustomed place, and Lethe turned slightly about from the table, where food had been eaten. A few crusts of bread lay on a plate, but the other dishes were empty. Lethe was sullen, sitting turned away from the door, and when Theodosia was seated she moved slightly and spoke with contempt, speaking softly.
“You come here and all the town will be a-talken. You want the town to be a-talken about you-all? What you want t’start up everybody a-talken about you for?”
“What’s to talk about now?”
Stig began to mumble half-articulate words, looking at the floor with a strange smile about his eyes. “A leetle scrop to eat, a leetle leavens. All I want is a leetle mess to eat. The pickens on a ham bone is good, the pickens on a ham bone. Have you-all got e’er ham bone around? All I want....”
Theodosia took her fiddle to her chin and began to play Americy’s tune, touching the bow lightly to the strings. The eyes in Stig’s face were bent down slightly at the corners, wearily drooped, but his lips smiled at the music. Theodosia remembered at that moment that Lethe had once had a child. “They buried Lethe’s baby today,” some voice was remembered saying. “Another death on Hill Street.” A child epidemic had been sweeping over the town. Remembering the infant she looked at Lethe with a searching gaze, the dead child and Lethe’s grief in her mind, wondering at the nature of this grief and searching Lethe’s face anew for some remnant of it.
“Skeeter Shoots, he’s got a thing like that-there to play on,” Stig said, speaking suddenly in a flare of words, half shouting. “Only he plays his’n on his mouth, plays it with his spit.” He began to hum aloud and to sing unmusical sounds, his hands crumpled at his lips. “Plays on it with his spit in his mouth,” he said. “Goes like this-here.”
“What you bring Stig here for?” Lethe said. “Did I tell you to bring Stig here?”
He began to tell of some confused happening which was related to the mouth harp in his mind. A rat had been killed in the corn room, a half-starved rat that had been shut into a tank for many days. He talked, catching at his breath, gleeful over the story, waving his hands. “We kill ol’ rat in corn room,” he said. “We brain ol’ rat one day in corn room.”
“What’s he want?” Lethe asked.