The Wild Cherry Tree [antikvár]

Halibut JonesHalibut Jones lay stretched at full length on top of a dry ditch, staring through the breathless August air at great sprays of blackberries gleaming on the hedgerow above. It had been a very good season for blackberries, a very hot season, and some of the berries were as fat and bloomed as grapes.Very high up for gathering, though, Halibut thought, too high to reach without a good long hook. Everything had grown so tall and lush in the long hot summer, after the heavy rains of spring. You couldn't have it all ways, of course. What was good for one thing was bad for another. It was very bad for mushrooms. You had to go traipsing a long way to find a button or two: hardly worth the candle. It was very bad for fishing too. You couldn't find the worms and the elderberries were hardly ready yet. The rivers needed a good long flush-out before anything would come on the feed and you didn't even get much with night-lines.Halibut had legs and a rump like a cart horse. He was tall with it too, well over six feet, and his belly ballooned over his thick leather belt like a tight umbrella. His hands were toad-brown and vast. Each finger was like the crabby neck of a tortoise. His mouth was a big beery pouch, red and heavy but wearily loose, so that most of the time it was hardly ever shut.By contrast his eyes, though big, were very soft. They were also very blue and as they held the blackberries in deep contemplation they had a gentle, dreamy air. It would, he thought, soon be dinner-time and the hand that rubbed a bead or two of sweat off his nose was slightly weary too. Altogether it was stifling weather for moving about very much.A few years ago he would have been at the blackberries like a whippet at a hare. He would have been up at the first crack of light and not done till dark. But nowadays nobody wanted