Arthur stood there looking down at the ground.

“Arthur, it ain’t like I got a lot of time here,” said Alvin.

Arthur looked up at Jean-Jacques, then at Alvin. “I just got to know one thing. Does a bird have a soul?”

“Am I a, how you say, théologien?”

“I just—if a bird dies, when it dies, when you kill it, what happens to it? Is it completely dead? Or is there some part of it that...”

Arthur stood there with tears beading up on his cheeks. Alvin reached out to hug him, but Arthur pulled away. “I ain’t asking for a hug, dammit, I’m asking for an answer!”

“I don’t know about that,” said Alvin. “What I see is like a little fire inside every living thing. Humans got a big bright one, most of them anyway, but there’s fire like that in every animal. The plants, too, only the fire is spread out all through the plant, not just in one place like it is with the animals. Margaret sees something like that, she says, only she don’t catch much more than a glimpse of what’s in the animals, like the shadow of a fire, if you get my drift. Now is that heartfire a soul? I don’t know. And what happens to it after a body dies? I don’t know that either. I know it ain’t in the body anymore. But I know sometimes the heartfire can leave the body. Happens when I’m doodlebugging, part of it goes out of me. Does that mean that when the body’s dead the whole thing can go? I don’t know, Arthur. You’re asking me what I can’t tell you.”

“But it might, you can say that, can’t you? It might live on, I mean if humans do it, then birds might too, right? Their heartfires may be smaller but that don’t mean they’ll burn out when they die, does it?”

“I reckon that’s good thinking,” said Alvin. “I reckon if anybody lives on after death—and I think they do, mind you, I just ain’t seen it—then why not birds? Heartfire is heartfire, I should think, lessen somebody tells me different. Is that good enough?”

Arthur Stuart nodded. “Then you can kill a bird now and then, if you got to.”

Jean-Jacques bowed in salute to Arthur. “I think, Mr. Stuart, that this was the question you really wanted to ask me from the start. Back in Philadelphia.”

Arthur Stuart looked a little embarrassed. “Maybe it was. I wasn’t sure myself.”

Alvin rubbed Arthur’s tight-curled hair. Arthur ducked away. “Don’t treat me like a baby.”

“You don’t like it, get taller,” said Alvin. “Long as you’re shorter than me, I’m going to use your head to scratch an itch whenever I feel like it.” Alvin touched the brim of his hat in salute to Mike and Jean-Jacques. “I’ll see you in Philadelphia, Mike. And Jean-Jacques, I hope to see you again someday, or at least to see your book.”

“I promise you your own copy,” said Jean-Jacques.