He drove south out of town and turned right where the postmaster had told him to and climbed in low gear the rough-packed road, a grade steeply up through close-drawn woods and then the land opened into a bowl and he saw the farm sitting ahead of him, the house and barns backed up against a hillside of pasture, the land below the barns spread in more pasture and hay meadows. The hillside pastures were studded with rocks and low circular juniper and a flock of sheep moved in the late summer grass. Below the barns in another pasture a herd of dun-colored cattle grazed, some ruminating in the shade of a pair of elms. Above the sheep the pasture gave way to woodlot that crested up over and crowned the ridgeline. Torn late summer clouds above.

He drove down the lane and parked in the yard between the house and barns and told the dogs to stay and got out and reached behind him to tuck the tails of his shirt back in and went up to the house. It had never been painted and the wood was weathered the soft buttery color of molasses. He skirted the back entryway where he knew everyone entered and exited and went across the small lawn past an old lilac and stood on the oblong block of granite set into the ground long ago as a stoop and knocked on the front door, his knuckles light at first and then harder, a crisp three raps.

The door opened in and an old Negro, a short stout woman in her fifties, stepped into it. She wore heavy serge trousers tucked into knee-high rubber boots and an old sweater darned many times. Her face deeply wrinkled, skin the color of cinnamon but heavily splotched with tangerine freckles. Green eyes. A fierce head of hair, once the same color as her freckles but now salted with gray. She peered up at him and said, “Oh, my.”

“Oh, ma’am, excuse me,” Foster said. “I must have got the wrong turn.”

“Well I don’t guess so,” she replied.

He’d not seen a Negro but a couple of times and those from a distance. He stepped back off the granite onto the grass. “Excuse me,” he repeated. “I made a mistake.”

She stepped after him and snaked one hand out and grasped hard around his wrist as if to hold him there. Her hand hard knotted, freckled and calloused. “You look just like Father,” she told him. “You’re Jamie’s boy, aren’t you?” And then without waiting for an answer, without letting go of him she pivoted her head and called back into the house, “Sister come here look!”

And swiveled back to peer at him again and said, “You are Foster, aren’t you? Foster Pelham?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said. His voice coming out of him as from a great distance. Not understanding anything. Somewhere far back he cried out Poppy! Poppy!