I could hear them calling to each other.
The elder bushes did not grow back in the shady ravines between the
bluffs, but in the hot, sandy bottoms along the stream, where their roots
were always in moisture and their tops in the sun. The blossoms were
unusually luxuriant and beautiful that summer.
I followed a cattle path through the thick underbrush until I came to a
slope that fell away abruptly to the water's edge. A great chunk of the
shore had been bitten out by some spring freshet, and the scar was masked
by elder bushes, growing down to the water in flowery terraces. I did not
touch them. I was overcome by content and drowsiness and by the warm
silence about me. There was no sound but the high, sing-song buzz of wild
bees and the sunny gurgle of the water underneath. I peeped over the edge
of the bank to see the little stream that made the noise; it flowed along
perfectly clear over the sand and gravel, cut off from the muddy main
current by a long sandbar. Down there, on the lower shelf of the bank, I
saw Antonia, seated alone under the pagoda-like elders. She looked up when
she heard me, and smiled, but I saw that she had been crying. I slid down
into the soft sand beside her and asked her what was the matter.
"It makes me homesick, Jimmy, this flower, this smell," she said softly.
"We have this flower very much at home, in the old country.
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