“I was fully tuned for the slightest chill, the finest frisson, but I was feeling nothing. And I didn’t see the old troop of spirits that sometimes accosted me. But it was their style to be seen from a distance. I’d never been among them.

“I found a patch of soil that was clear and I dug easily through the moist earth. Pretty soon I had a hole about two feet deep, and the casket fitted easily there, and I filled in the earth around it and over it.

“I put the heavy marble tombstone firmly in place.

“I made the Sign of the Cross. I said three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers and then the old prayer:

Let perpetual light shine upon her, O Lord,

and may her soul and the souls of all

the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.

“The new grave looked mighty little among the old coffin-sized concrete tombs, but it was still respectable and even fine.

“When I looked up I saw Goblin by the oak tree, watching me. I was drunk and he was cold sober. I was filthy dirty. He was immaculately clean. He wasn’t just appearing to me. He was studying me. And only as I looked at him did I realize that I hadn’t seen him all day. I hadn’t even felt him near me. I hadn’t thought about him. For the last few days, I’d seldom seen him. I hadn’t talked to him.

“ ‘Yo, brother,’ I said.

“I walked or staggered up the slope and reached out to embrace him. He vanished and left nothing there for me to hold, and a cold feeling crept over me. But I was drunk enough to cry about nothing.

“And Jasmine was shouting, ‘Suppertime.’ Red beans and rice, gravy thick with pork fat and pork chops simmered with it.

“It must have been around nine o’clock before I was showered and shaved, and sobered up. I came down to be with Aunt Queen and tell her what her nurse, Cindy, had been telling her for days, that she had to get up, get going and above all to take some nourishment.

“I found her sitting up in bed against a mass of white lace-covered pillows in one of her gorgeous feather-trimmed white negligees, her glasses down on her nose as she read what appeared to be a letter of several pages.

“Cindy, the nurse, with her usual very bright smile, was in attendance. She excused herself as I came in.

“ ‘Well, I have it, beautiful boy,’ Aunt Queen said. ‘Come here, pull up a chair.’

“ ‘Only if you eat something will I do that,’ I said. ‘What is it you have?’