Mebane said, “There’s no peace in this life is what it is. It’s why we stretch out our hands toward heaven. But all the same, a man can’t stop. Well now that’s not right—plenty do. But it’s not those ones we’re concerned with here, is it Foster Pelham? It’s the rest of you, that keep always hauling your way ahead, thinking if you get one more thing, one more bit of understanding, one more question answered, one more confusion cleared up, then maybe you’ll get it here on earth—that peace, I mean.”

And he turned sudden, quick, spinning the cane tip before him. Foster was close behind him to follow what he was saying. He stopped short, stepping back. Mebane smiled again at him, used the cane tip to prod back one of the rolling chairs and sank into it. He pointed the cane at the other chair. “Sit,” he said.

The walls an ancient faded mustard with the teardrops of waterstains. A persian carpet worn down to a heavy corduroy crisscross of threads lay over wide heart-pine plank flooring. Thick drapes the color of moss pulled partway back to let in some light of the afternoon, the windows behind them shut tight, the glass discolored. A crane-necked electric lamp was lit on the table. The air in the room unmoving, smothered with so many layers of odor over so many years that it had become its own thing—soft not sour, near fragrant.

As if seeing the room as Foster would Alexander Mebane said, “For years and years I had a woman in every day but Sunday to cook and clean. Then one evening I was eating the dinner she’d laid out for me and her in the kitchen waiting for me to finish so she could clean up after me and I stopped eating, put my fork right down and got up and went into the kitchen and I asked her, ‘Millie do you need this job?’ She looked right at me and told me someone had to look after me. I told her it wasn’t so. That I wasn’t about to starve to death and the rest of it could fall down around me for all I cared but it seemed ignorant to be sitting in there at more dinner than I’d eat in three days while a woman ten years older than I sat waiting in the kitchen. She sat there looking at me while I said all that, not agreeing but not looking away either. So I asked her again if she needed the job. If she needed the money. And she told me she didn’t. Since then I’ve done on my own, looked after myself. It may look poor and sad to you as it does to some others but I’m happy with it.”

“Wouldn’t she already have quit,” Foster said, “if she didn’t need the job?”

“The money you mean.”

“Yes, sir.”