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"You're going to love this room," Angel told her.
"You plain crazy," Rose Rose told him. "But I already love it."
It was a day that hurt the harvest; Mr. Rose wouldn't pick and half the men were sore from falling off the bicycles. Homer Wells, who never would master the terrible machine, had a puffy knee and a bruise between his shoulder blades the size of a melon. Peaches refused to go up a ladder; he would load the trailers and pick drops all day. Muddy groaned and complained; he was the only one among them who had actually learned to ride. Black Pan announced that it was a good day for a fast.
Mr. Rose, it appeared, was fasting. He sat outside the cider house in the weak sun, wrapped in a blanket from his bed; he sat Indian-style, not talking to anyone.
"He say he on a pickin' strike," Peaches whispered to Muddy, who told Homer that he thought Mr. Rose was on a hunger strike, too--"and every other kind of strike they is."
"We'll just have to get along without him," Homer told the men, but everyone pussyfooted their way past Mr. Rose, who appeared to have enthroned himself in front of the cider house.
"Or else he planted hisself, like a tree," Peaches said.
Black Pan brought him a cup of coffee and some fresh corn bread, but Mr. Rose wouldn't touch any of it. Sometimes, he appeared to be gnawing on one of the pacifiers. It was a cool day, and when the faint sun would drift behind the clouds, Mr. Rose would draw the blanket over his head; then he sat cloaked and robed and closed off completely from any of them.
"He like an Indian," Peaches said. "He don't make no treaty."
"He want to see his daughter," Muddy informed Homer at the end of the day. "That what he say to me--it all he say. Just see her. He say he won't touch her."
"Tell him he can come to the house and see her there," Homer Wells told Muddy.
But at suppertime, Muddy came to the kitchen door alone. Candy asked him in, and asked him to eat with them--Rose Rose was sitting with them, at the table--but Muddy was too nervous to stay. "He say he won't come here," Muddy told Homer. "He say for her to come to the cider house. He say to tell you they got they own rules. He say you breakin' the rules, Homer."
Rose Rose sat so still at the table that she was not even chewing; she wanted to be sure to hear everything Muddy was saying. Angel tried to take her hand, which was cold, but she pulled it away from him and kept both her hands wound up in her napkin, in her lap.
"Muddy," Wally said, "you tell him that Rose Rose is staying in my house, and that in my house we follow my rules. You tell him he's welcome to come here anytime."
"He won't do it," Muddy said.
"I have to go see him," Rose Rose said.
"No, you don't," Candy told her. "You tell him he sees her here, or nowhere, Muddy," Candy said.
"Yes, ma'am. I brung the bicycles back," Muddy said to Angel. "They a little banged up." Angel went outside to look at the bicycles, and that's when Muddy handed him the knife.
"You don't need this, Angel," Muddy told the boy, "but you give it to Rose Rose. You say I want her to have it. Just so she have one."
Angel looked at Muddy's knife; it was a bone-handled jackknife, and part of the bone was chipped. It was one of those jackknives where the blade locks in place when you open it so it can't close on your fingers. The blade was almost six inches long, which would make it prominent in anyone's pocket, and over the years it had seen a lot of whetstone; the blade was ground down very thin and the edge was very sharp.
"Don't you need it, Muddy?" Angel asked him.
"I never knew what to do with it," Muddy confessed. "I just get in trouble with it."
"I'll give it to her," Angel said.
"You tell her her father say he love her, and he just wanna see her," Muddy said. "Just see," he repeated.
Angel considered this message; then he said, "I love Rose Rose, you know, Muddy."
"Sure I know," Muddy said. "I love her, too. We all love her. Everybody love Rose Rose--that part of her problem."
"If Mister Rose just wants to see her," Angel said, "how come you're giving her your knife?"
"Just so she have one," Muddy repeated.
Angel gave her the knife when they were sitting in his room after supper.
"It's from Muddy," he told her.
