Lulu was torn. She walked away from the door and sat down heavily in the wooden porch swing. The chains squealed reluctantly, rhythmically, as she rocked on her heels and the swing began to sway. She didn’t look at me for a few seconds, maybe a minute or more. She was working something out, deciding how much to give up and how much to keep. Every sentence was a trade-off, and I wished to God I knew what she was playing to keep. But when she raised her eyes to me I knew she was giving up the round . . . at least as much as Lulu ever gives anything up. At least I’d gotten her into a mood where she was more willing to talk, and that was something new.

“Okay, then,” she breathed. “You’re right. Sit down beside me. You’ve not had a bedtime story in longer than I could say.”

IV

“What year did they fight part of the Civil War here in the valley? What year was the Battle Above the Clouds, like old white people like to call it—you know, when they fought on Lookout Mountain? When was that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, joining her on the porch swing and kicking it into back-and-forth motion with the back of my heel.

Lulu dropped one of her toes and pressed it against the ground, slowing the sway but not stopping it altogether. “I don’t know either,” she said. “So I don’t know exactly when this started, then. We’ll say 1860-something. That’s close enough. My great-great-grandmother was a house nigger named Lissie. She worked for the Porter family, who had a big house at the foot of Lookout—not too far from the thick of the fighting. The Porters had fled down into the valley when the shooting started, but they wanted some of their things from the house if they could save them, so they sent Lissie and her brother out after them.