Alice Louise Berry

Alice Louise Berry is remembered as Earskell’s beloved, a young woman whose ambition took them from the hills to Cincinnati and whose early death fixed their time there in his memory as both their happiest days and a life cut short. Though she appears through recollection rather than in the present action, her choices and loss reveal the tenderness and regret that endure in Earskell’s later years.

Background and Ambition

Alice was from Fox Knob, where she had been raised beside the Riley place; by the time Earskell told her story, her former home was gone. She wanted to attend secretarial school. Earskell remembered that he was not much older than Arvin is when he followed her away from the hills, making their departure an early shared venture shaped by Alice’s plans.

Earskell names her for Emma, who remembers Alice. Arvin has heard fragments of the story many times, but asks why Earskell did not stay away and what brought him back to Coal Creek. The question draws attention to the part of the story that Earskell has rarely explained: the loss that ended their life together in the city.

Cincinnati and Her Death

Alice began classes at the Gilmore Sanderson Secretarial School. A few weeks later, during the 1918 influenza epidemic, she died, among the millions of people who succumbed to the disease. Earskell often imagined that she might have survived had they stayed in the hills. But he did not turn her ambition into a mistake: he had loved that she dreamed big, and was glad he had not tried to dissuade her from pursuing those dreams.

The memories of Cincinnati hold a double meaning for him. He believed that the days they spent there, among tall buildings and crowded streets before Alice came down with the fever, were the happiest of her life—and his. Her death ended those days almost as soon as her schooling began, leaving Earskell to remember not only the future they lost but the happiness they had actually shared.

Earskell’s Later Memories

Years afterward, Earskell thinks increasingly about Alice as his cataracts worsen. The prospect that he may soon be unable to drive makes aging feel like another form of loss, and his reflection that he and Alice both missed out on much links his failing sight to the life she was denied. Her memory is not simply a story from his youth: it returns with particular force as his own independence narrows.

When Arvin presses him about why he came back, Earskell pauses, looking across the room as if searching the flowered wallpaper for an answer, though he knows the reason. He then lets the memory recede and turns to the cake. That small change of subject leaves the loss present without requiring him to explain it further.

Narrative Significance

Alice’s remembered story gives Earskell a past defined by more than his role in Arvin’s household. Through the account of her ambitions, their journey, and the brief happiness of their days in Cincinnati, the narrative shows the old man’s capacity for devotion and his respect for a woman’s independent hopes. Her absence also makes his regret specific: he can imagine a different outcome if they had stayed, yet he remains glad that he did not ask Alice to give up the future she wanted.