“You don’t think much of me, do you?”

“You don’t care what I think,” Harry said. “You look at me and you pray, ‘Lord, don’t let me end up like that.’ You’re young. You want the good life.”

“I want something to show for it.”

“For what?”

“It. You know. Work, labor, toil, strain, worry. Love.”

“Ah, love. Now we’re down to the nut.”

“Cut it out, Harry. What do you know about it?”

“More than you realize, my boy.”

“Spare me more stories about the old plantation. Some goddamn tale of lost love—jilted under the magnolias by a buxom Southern belle.”

Harry held his glass in both hands and bent over the bar, not drinking, staring into the sparkling crystal. “There’s another kind of love, Sam. Maybe you’ve never run across it.”

“I’ve seen all kinds.”

Harry sighed. “I’m talking about love of a place.”

“Patriotism,” Sam said. “You’re very big on that down here.”

Harry shook his head. “No, not patriotism. You’re not listening. Not love of country. Love of a place.”

“This place.”

Harry rubbed the glass between his palms as though he were trying to ignite it from friction. “Yes, this place. Does that surprise you?”

Sam shrugged. “I’ve moved around quite a lot. One place is pretty much like another.” But the soft ocean breeze had stuck in his nostrils, as the deep green of the pine tops against the opal sky had stuck in his eyes.

The colored bartender freshened Harry’s whiskey without being summoned and stood with his back to them, a few paces away. Sam could feel him listening. The man’s green jacket was flat and smooth as a billiard felt.

“You’re wrong,” Harry said quietly. “I feel sorry for you—to be as old as you are, and not to know that.”

Sam laughed. “You just said how young I was.”

Harry was staring into the crystal again, frowning, as if this were very important to him and he must get it right. “A man can live his whole life in a place and not belong to it. Nor it to him.” He squinted at Sam to see if he was paying attention. “Or he can step off the train in a place he’s never laid eyes on before and belong to it body and soul, world without end.”

“Amen.” Sam smiled.

“You don’t believe me.”

“Sure—the first part. Seems to me that’s where Alex Manly comes in.”

“Not just him.”

“Oh, stop being so serious, Harry.”

“It doesn’t get any more serious than this. It’s time you understood that.”

“You love this place.”

Harry nodded slowly, looking him in the eye. “So do you.”

“Not me,” Sam lied.