“You ain’t sleep there, are you, fellow?”

Zeke’s eyes burned from being closed. He had to clear his throat, which was dry like ash. “No . . . no, just checking the backs of my eyelids.”

“They all right?”

“Same as I left them the last time.”

Finally he was warm, and the comfortable buzz and hum and whirl of the car had made him doze, his mind left thick and cottony.

On either side of the car rose high timber, tall pines surrounded by thick underbrush. They drove across a bridge over a swamp that was low and murky, huge water oaks, their gnarled and wicked roots perching at the shore. The road wound and meandered through the forests, causing the car to dip and rock. This made Zeke’s drowsiness harder to fight, but he sat up, shaking his head, determined not to succumb to sleep.

Retha. The image from the dream left him with a bittersweet feeling. A feeling that had been rising and rising in him over the years. Had their relationship been what he had thought it had been? Or was it what he imagined? What he had created in his mind? Was it an illusion to satisfy himself? One day a few years after her death, he began to be slowly gripped by the fear that she had never been truly happy in their marriage. He had married her when she was sixteen, he eighteen. She had been pregnant, not with Sammy, but with another boy, Thomas, who died five years later. Then there was a girl, who lived only a year. She was called Edna. And after Sammy there had been one stillborn boy, and no more. Everybody knew that Zeke wanted children, and Zeke did too. And yes, there were children by other women—well, shoot . . . a twenty-two-year-old boy . . . well, he got needs, well, maybe they ain’t needs, but they are mighty powerful wants. And I declare if you wants something enough in your mind it becomes a need. I ain’t ashamed (Oh yes, I am ashamed) to admit that I snuck behind her back and carried on like I done—yes, and I did enjoy it, too . . . that little Pickett gal could make a man happy. Time was I wished I’d a married her instead—no, no, no, old man, now that ain’t right. Just ain’t right.