Page 32, Paragraphs 4 - 7; Note

Page 32, Paragraph 4:

I reply, "Yes," and, "You're right," and so forth, yet there's a sadness in my voice so that she understands that I don't like it that she'll be away for a long time.* Ah. It's like she doesn't hear the sadness in my voice. She turns away from me to walk to the entryway and the gate, where she stops and turns back to me. She smiles at me now.

Paragraph 5:

She says, "Those clothes look good on you. You look better with them." Now she goes through the entryway and shuts the gate and goes away to where I can't see her, but as I shut my eyes, I can still see her smile in my mind.

Paragraph 6:

I lie under the hay and by the branch-hut and take my pants off so I can look at my knee. The leaf that the girl put on my leg has gotten drier, as has the mud that's holding it to my leg. I take the leaf between my fingers and lift it way up from my leg; below the leaf there's soft skin growing, and the injury on my leg is all but gone.

Paragraph 7:

Now I put the clothes back around my leg. She says I look better in them, and I think she's right, yet the feel of the clothes is strange to me. From the front of the white-skin hut I hear the girl go this way and now that, doing things I can't see, yet the smell of flowers is everywhere. With a hand inside my clothes, I scratch the soft skin growing below my knee. I chew on the bread while many thoughts come to me.

*I think it's interesting that he thinks that the next morning is a long time from now. Actually, I find most of the interaction between the narrator and the girl pretty charming. He's got it bad, doesn't he?

Page 31, Paragraph 4; Page 32, Paragraphs 1 - 3; Note

Sorry for the delay between posts - it was a busy weekend.

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Page 31, Paragraph 4:

The men, far away, lift their hands - I do the same. The girl doesn't move. She says, "It's good that they see you with me." "How's it good?", I say, and she replies, "Since the men see that I know you, they're not going to throw stones at you anymore." Way off on the other edge [of the river?] the men walk into where the trees are, so we can't see them anymore. "Come on now," says the girl, "let's get back to the white-skin hut before Hob gets back from the village downriver where he went."

Page 32, Paragraph 1 (first full paragraph):

Walking back, we walk slowly on the wet wood. We come down the ramp from the bridge, and I think about the skeleton woman lying in the darkness below our feet - about all she thinks of in her thin and empty head.*

Paragraph 2:

Taking a long route through the trees at the river's edge and across the reeds, we come to the pigpen. I can tell by where the sun's at in the sky that it's noon. My shadow has become little and frightened - it's hiding beneath my feet.

Paragraph 3:

Resting on the dirt wall, the girl says she's going now to do work for Hob. She scratches at her neck like she has an itch, and says, "I can't come to the pigpen at night, because Hob wants me for a lot of things. I'll come see you in the morning." She says, "I have some bread that I made [for you] so you won't get hungry in the meantime."

*I love that sentence; I'm not really sure why.