The Only Use

ornery
in
The Secret Life of Bees
(Edited)

He had an orneriness year-round, but especially in the summer, when he worked his peach orchards daylight to dusk.
p. 3.6

orneriness = crankiness (easily annoyed and quick to complain and argue)

Definitions:

(1) (ornery as in: is ornery when she first wakes up)
quick to get annoyed, complain, argue, and be uncooperative
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Much more rarely (and seldom any more), ornery can describe someone as "low down", coarse, or unrefined. Mark Twain often used the word in that manner as in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn where he wrote: "The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery." and "The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling."