Wednesday looked at her and said, 'Yeah, I would.'

'You can see everything in the pockets, right?' Melony asked.

Wednesday looked again and saw only the odd sickle shape of the partially opened horn-rim barrette; tight and hard against the worn denim, it dug into Melony's thigh. It was the barrette that mary Agnes Cork had {396} stolen from Candy, and Melony had stolen for herself. One day, she imagined, her hair might be long enough for the barrette to be of use. Until such a time, she carried it like a pocket knife in her right-thigh pocket.

'What's that?' Wednesday asked.

'That's a penis knife,' Melony said.

'A what knife?' Wednesday said.

'You heard me,' Melony said. 'It's real small and it's real sharp-it's good for just one thing.'

'What's that?' Wednesday asked.;

'It cuts off the end of a penis,' Melony said. 'Real fast, real easy-just the end.'

If the picking crew at York Farm had been a knifecarrying crew, someone might have asked Melony to display the penis knife-just as an object of general appreciation among knife-carrying friends. But no one asked; the story appeared to hold. It allied itself with the other stories attached to Melony and solidified the underlying, uneasy feeling among the workers at York Farm: that Melony was no one to mess with. Around Melony, even the beer drinkers behaved.

The only ill effect of the York Farm picking crew drinking beer while they pressed cider was the frequency of their urinating, which Melony objected to only when they peed too near the cider house.

'Hey, I don't want to hear that!' she'd holler out the window when she could hear anyone pissing. 'I don't want to smell it later, either! Get away from the building. What's the matter-you afraid of the dark?'

Sandra and Ma liked Melony for that, and they enjoyed the refrain; whenever they heard someone peeing, they would not fail to holler, in unison, 'What's the matter? You afraid of the dark?'

But if everyone tolerated Melony's hardness, or even appreciated her for it, no one liked her reading at night. She was the only one who read anything, and it took a while for her to realize how unfriendly they thought reading was, how insulted they felt when she did it. {397}

When they finished pressing that night and everyone settled into bed, Melony asked, as usual, if her reading light was going to bother anyone.

'The light don't bother nobody,' Wednesday said.

There were murmurs of consent, and Rather said, 'You all remember Cameron?' There was laughter and Rather explained to Melony that Cameron, who had worked at York Farm for years, had been such a baby that he needed a light on, all night, just to sleep.

'He thought animals was gonna eat him if he shut out the light!' Sammy said.

'What animals?' Melony asked.

'Cameron didn't know,' somebody said.

Melony kept reading Jane Eyre, and after a while, Sandra said, 'It's not the light that bothers us, Melony.'

'Yeah,' someone said. Melony didn't get it for a while, but gradually she became aware that they had all rolled toward her in their beds and were watching her sullenly.

'Okay,' she said. 'So what bothers you?'

'What you readin' about, anyway?' Wednesday asked.

'Yeah,' Sammy said. 'What's so special 'bout that book?'

'It's just a book,' Melony said.

'Pretty big deal that you can read it, huh?' Wednesday asked.

'What?' said Melony.

'Maybe, if you like it so much,' Rather said, 'we might like it, too.'

'You want me to read to you?' Melony asked.

'Somebody read to me, once,' Sandra said.

'It wasn't me!' Ma said. 'It wasn't your father, either!'

'I never said it was!' Sandra said.

'I never heard nobody read to nobody,' Sammy said.

'Yeah,' somebody said.

Melony saw that some of the men were propped on their elbows in their beds, waiting. Even Ma turned her great lump around and faced Melony's bed.

'Quiet, everybody,' Rather said. {398}

For the first time in her life, Melony was afraid. After all her efforts and her hard traveling, she felt she had been returned to the girls' division without being aware of it; but it wasn't only that. It was the first time anyone had expected something of her; she knew what Jane Eyre meant to her, but what could it mean to them? She'd read it to children too young to understand half the words, too young to pay attention until the end of a sentence, but they were orphans-prisoners of the routine of being read to aloud; it was the routine that mattered.

Melony was more than halfway in her third or fourth journey through Jane Eyre. She said, I'm on page two hundred and eight. There's a lot that's happened before.'

'Just read it,' Sammy said.

'Maybe I should start at the beginning,' Melony suggested.

'Just read what you readin' to yourself,' Rather said gently.

Her voice had never trembled before, but Melony began.

' “The wind roared high in the great tree which embowered the gates,” ' she read.

'What's “embowered”?' Wednesday asked her.

'Like a bower,' Melony said. 'Like a thing hanging

over you, like for grapes or roses.'

'It's a kind of bower where the shower is,' Sandra said.

'Oh,' someone said.

' “But the road as far as I could see,” ' Melony continued, ' “to the right hand and left, was all still and solitary.. ”

'What's that?' Sammy asked.

'Solitary is alone,' Melony said.

'Like solitaire, you know solitaire,' Rather said, and there was an aproving murmur.

'Shut up your interruptin',' Sandra said.

'Well, we got to understand,' Wednesday said.

'Just shut up!' Ma said. {399}

'Read,' Rather said to Melony, and she tried to go on.

' “…the road…all still and solitary: save for the shadows of clouds crossing it at intervals, as the moon looked out, it was but a long pale line, unvaried by one moving speck,” ' Melony read.

'Un-what?' someone asked.

'Unvaried means unchanged, not changed,' Melony said.

'I know that,' Wednesday said. 'I got that one.'

'Shut up,' Sandra said.

' “A puerile tear,” ' Melony began, but she stopped. 'I don't know what “puerile” means,' she said. “It's not important that you know what every word means.” 'Okay,' someone said. ' “A puerile tear dimmed my eye while I looked-a tear of disappointment and impatience: ashamed of it, wiped it away..”

'There, we know what it is, anyway,' Wednesday said.

' “…I lingered,” ' Melony read.

'You what?' Sammy asked.

'Hung around; to linger means to hang around!' Melony said sharply. She began again ' “…the moon shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her curtain of dense cloud; the night grew dark..”

'It's gettin' scary now,' Wednesday observed.

' “…rain came driving fast on the wind.” ' Melony had changed “gale” to “wind” without their knowing it. ' “I wish he would come! I wish he would come! exclaimed, seized with hypochondriac foreboding.” ' Melony stopped with that; tears filled her eyes, and she couldn't see the words. There was a long silence before anyone spoke.

' What was she seized with?' Sammy asked, frightened.

'I don't know!' Melony said, sobbing. 'Some kind of fear, I think.'

They were respectful of Melony's sobs for a while, and then Sammy said, 'I guess it's some kind of horror story.'

'What you want to read that before you try to sleep?' {400} Rather asked Melony with friendly concern, but Melony lay down on her bed and turned off her reading light.

When all the lights were out, Melony felt Sandra sit on her bed beside her; if it had been Ma, she knew, her bed would have sagged more heavily. 'You ask me, you better forget that boyfriend,' Sandra said. 'If he didn't tell you how to find him, he ain't no good, anyway.' Melony had not felt anyone stroke her temples since Mrs. Grogan in the girls' division at St. Cloud's; she realized she missed Mrs. Grogan very much, and for a while this took her mind off Homer Wells.