Paw, I’m tired. Let me rest.

No, I ain’t gone have it. There are rules to this house. If you live here, you live by them.

I’m grown, old man.

Then get your own house.

Goddamn it. I will.

Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain in this house.

Oh, well, excuse me, Mr. Deacon. I’m sorry I took your precious massa’s name for granted. But it looks to me you the one been taken for granted. You old fool.

You make me sad, boy. You make me right sad.

Oh, yeah. Well, you just wait. You just wait.

“. . . Zeke?”

“Huh? What’s that you say, Jimmy?”

“I was asking if you knew what floor Asa was on?”

“No, I don’t. All I know is intensive care. That gal told me, but I done forgot.” Zeke grunted. They were now outside Clinton, where Highway 50 became a four-lane highway, with overpasses and wide intersections, with stoplights and huge green signs with all this information about where to get on here and where to get off there. It was all too confusing for him. Too much sort and figure. It made him feel old. Clinton done grown up too much for me. It always was one of the bigger towns in the area—on account of that lumberyard, I reckon—but t’won’t near as big as Wilmington or even Kinston. Then after they built that meat-packing plant, and then that big Du Pont plant, next thing you know there’s all kinds of plants and warehouses, shopping centers (they were passing one at that moment, a new one with a fat, squat Belk’s Department store perched in the center), a community college . . . shoot. Things change. That’s for sure. Grandpap use to say, if a man can’t get use to change, he can’t get use to living. So I wonder what that means for me? I keep picturing the grave. My being in it. I know heaven is my home, praise God, but I keep having this dream over and over, this same dream. I wonder if there’s anything to it. The Good Book do say: Their young men shall see visions and their old men shall dream dreams. But this dream . . .