Adam chuckled. “This naming is no simple business, I see.”

“Did you think it would be?”

“I didn’t know it could be so pleasant,” said Adam.

Lee came out with a platter of fried chicken, a bowl of smoking boiled potatoes, and a deep dish of pickled beets, all carried on a pastry board. “I don’t know how good it will be,” he said. “The hens are a little old. We don’t have any pullets. The weasels got the baby chicks this year.”

“Pull up,” said Samuel.

“Wait until I get my ng-ka-py,” said Lee.

While he was gone Adam said, “It’s strange to me—he used to speak differently.”

“He trusts you now,” Samuel said. “He has a gift of resigned loyalty without hope of reward. He’s maybe a much better man than either of us could dream of being.”

Lee came back and took his seat at the end of the table. “Just put the boys on the ground,” he said.

The twins protested when they were set down. Lee spoke to them sharply in Cantonese and they were silent.

The men ate quietly as nearly all country people do. Suddenly Lee got up and hurried into the house. He came back with a jug of red wine. “I forgot it,” he said. “I found it in the house.”

Adam laughed. “I remember drinking wine here before I bought the place. Maybe I bought the place because of the wine. The chicken’s good, Lee. I don’t think I’ve been aware of the taste of food for a long time.”

“You’re getting well,” Samuel said. “Some people think it’s an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around.”

[4]

Lee cleared the table and gave each of the boys a clean drumstick. They sat solemnly holding their greasy batons and alternately inspecting and sucking them. The wine and the glasses stayed on the table.

“We’d best get on with the naming,” Samuel said. “I can feel a little tightening on my halter from Liza.”

“I can’t think what to name them,” Adam said.

“You have no family name you want—no inviting trap for a rich relative, no proud name to re-create?”

“No, I’d like them to start fresh, insofar as that is possible.”

Samuel knocked his forehead with his knuckles. “What a shame,” he said. “What a shame it is that the proper names for them they cannot have.”

“What do you mean?” Adam asked.

“Freshness, you said. I thought last night—” He paused. “Have you thought of your own name?”

“Mine?”

“Of course. Your first-born—Cain and Abel.”

Adam said, “Oh, no. No, we can’t do that.”

“I know we can’t. That would be tempting whatever fate there is. But isn’t it odd that Cain is maybe the best-known name in the whole world and as far as I know only one man has ever borne it?”

Lee said, “Maybe that’s why the name has never changed its emphasis.”