Colleen Fenwick was orphaned at eleven years old - at first his mother died, and a few days later his father died in a car accident; he was taken to his unmarried cousins by father Viren and Dolly Talbo. Virena is the richest woman in town: she owns a pharmacy, a ready-made dress shop, a gas station, and a grocery store; gaining all this good, she did not become an easygoing person.
Dolly is quiet and inconspicuous; although she’s older, she seems to be Virena’s adopter too - like Colleen. Still in the house there lives a cook Catherine Creek, a black woman posing as an Indian woman - she grew up with her sisters, their father took her into the service of another girl. Dolly, Colleen and Katherine are friends, despite the difference in age. Virena is ashamed of her family - they don’t have any guests, and in the town they say that Dolly Talbo has not enough screws and that she is a Virenin cross. Dolly is really unsociable, but wise in everything about nature. Once a week, Dolly, Katherine and Colleen go to the forest to collect herbs and roots for potions from dropsy, which Dolly cooks according to the recipe she received from her childhood from an old gypsy and sends it to her customers all over the state. During such trips, they lived in a tree house.
Having passed the field covered with Native American grass, which becomes purple and so harsh by the fall that its rustling and ringing are like harp sounds, they went to the edge of the forest, where a plane tree with a double trunk grows, in the fork of which boards are laid, so that it turns out to be a tree house. The growths on its bark are like steps, and the railing is served by lashes of wild grapes, entangled in the trunks. Having hidden the provisions on the tree, they dispersed in different directions, and filling the bags, climbed into a plane tree, ate chicken, jam and cake, guessed by flowers, and it seemed to them that they were swimming through the day on a raft in the branches of a tree, merging with this tree in one, like silvery leaves in the sun, like the goats living in it.
Once they calculated the proceeds from the sale of a drug for a year - it turned out to be such that Virena became interested: she had a nose for money.
Collin was sixteen years old when one day Virena returned from another trip to Chicago with a certain doctor Maurice Ritz - bow ties, costumes of flashy flowers, blue lips, and drilling eyes. Shame and shame, they said in the town that Virena contacted this Jew from Chicago, and she was also twenty years younger than her. On Sunday, the doctor received an invitation to dinner. Dolly wanted to sit out in the kitchen, but Virena did not allow, and although Dolly broke a crystal vase, dropping it into the sauce that sprinkled the guest, Virena insisted that this dinner was arranged in her honor. Dr. Ritz pulled out a pack of preprinted stickers, “An old gypsy's potion expels dropsy,” and Virena said she bought an abandoned cannery on the outskirts of the town, ordered equipment, and hired a valuable specialist, Maurice Ritz, for the industrial production of Dolly’s potion. But Dolly flatly refuses to open the recipe, showing unusual hardness to her. “This is the only thing I have,” she says. In the evening, the sisters quarrel: Virena claims that she worked all her life as an ox and everything in this house belongs to her; Dolly rustles in response that she and Katherine have been trying all their lives to make this house warm and cozy for her and thought that there is room for them, and if that is not so, then they will leave tomorrow. "Where will you go!" - Virena threw, but Colleen, who overhears in the attic, already guessed where. At night, Dolly, Katherine and Colleen go to the forest, to the tree house, grabbing a warm blanket, a bag of provisions and forty-seven dollars - all that they had.
The first to find them is Riley Henderson, who hunts for squirrels in the forest. At the age of fifteen, he was left without parents with two younger sisters in charge: his father, a missionary, was killed in China, and his mother in a madhouse. The guardian uncle tried to pocket the mother’s inheritance. The rally exposed him and since then became his own master: he bought a car, drove around the neighborhood with all the whores of the town and raised his sisters in severity. Riley is also an outsider in the town, and he liked the tree.
Virena, finding Dolly's note in the morning, announces a search. She managed to send out many telegrams with their signs, when it became known that they were very close. A whole delegation of town officials comes to the tree: sheriff, pastor with his wife; they are accompanied by the old judge Kul; on behalf of Virena, they demand the return of the fugitives, threatening to use force. Judge Kul suddenly turns out to be an ally of those on the tree - he explains that no one has violated the law. After an easy brawl, the high delegation withdrew, and the old judge remained in the tree.
Judge Kulu was under seventy; he graduated from Harvard, twice visited Europe, had a wife from Kentucky, always dressed well and wore a flower in his buttonhole. For all this, they did not like him in the town. After the death of his wife (she died in Europe; when she became ill, he left the post of district judge to take her to where their honeymoon went) he was left out of work: his two sons and their wives shared the house equally, having convinced that the old man lives for a month in every family. It is not surprising that the tree house seemed cozy to him ...
In the evening, the Rally returned, with an apology for involuntarily giving out the fugitives, with provisions and with news: the sheriff persuaded Virena to sign an arrest warrant for the theft of her property, and he intends to arrest the judge for violating public order.
In the morning, the sheriff dragged Katherine to prison; Collin managed to escape, and Dolly and the judge escaped, climbing even higher on a tree. The fugitives easily got off because the sheriff was informed of the robbery of the Virena by Dr. Ritz: he cleaned the safe of her office, taking away $ 12,700, appropriated money for the purchase of equipment and disappeared. From this blow of fate, Virena became seriously ill,
On Saturday, a van arrived in the town, decorated with a home-made shield with the inscription: “Let little Homer lasso your soul for our Lord,” and in the van is Sister Ida with fifteen of her children born of different men. The townspeople liked the prayer meeting of the Renovationists, the donations were so generous that they provoked the furious envy of Pastor Baster, who, lying to Virena, that Sister Aida allegedly calls Dolly Talbo an apostate and unchristian, made her call the sheriff and order her to be expelled from the city. The sheriff obeyed, and the Rev. Buster forcibly took all the money raised from the children. Aida wants to find Dolly to “settle this matter”, because they were left without money, without food and without gasoline.
Upon learning of this, Dolly is horrified that a piece of mouth is ripped out of her children’s name, goes to meet her and leads the whole mob to the tree. They feed the children, Dolly gives Aide his forty-seven dollars and the judge’s golden watch, but Virena, the pastor, the sheriff and his assistants with guns are sent to them. The boys, climbing the trees, greet the intruders with a hail of stones and the sound of rattles and whistles; firing at random, one of the sheriff's assistants shoots Riley. A thunderstorm begins.
Against this tragic background, Dolly and Virena explain. Virena, seeing a new Dolly, Dolly, who was proposed by Judge Cool and who throws in her face, is actually a bit of honor on behalf of Telbo, if, hiding behind them, they rob children and throw old women in prison, breaks down and grows old before our eyes; Virena begs her sister to return home, not to leave her alone in the house where everything is created and settled Dolly.
The fugitives returned, but for a long time their life was divided into before and after these three autumn days spent on the tree. The judge left the house of his sons and settled in a guesthouse. Virena and Colleen caught a cold in the rain, Dolly nursed them until she got down herself with creeping pneumonia. Not fully recovering, she enthusiastically creates for Collin a fancy dress for the All Saints Day party and, painting it, dies of a blow. A year later, Colleen leaves the town where he grew up; goodbye, the legs themselves lead him to a tree; frozen in a field of Indian grass, he recalls how Dolly said: “The grass rings the harp, she collects all our stories, she tells them day and night, this harp, which sounds in different voices ...”
