Foster came to the door and looked down at Mebane. The old man standing now with his feet apart, the cane planted between them. His head tilted back to look at Foster.

Foster said, “What happened to her?”

“Who?”

“Her mother. After my grandmother left here. After the war was over. What happened to her mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“She left here is all I know.”

“Then what were you talking about?”

“Before. I was talking about before. Before any of what you even have thought of.”

Foster ran his hand over his face. He said, “I tell you what, Mr. Alexander Mebane. All this is too much for me. I’m beat to pieces from the road. You’re talking riddles around me. I got two dogs in the car likely near dead from the heat. I need to get them some water and find them a place to run. Then I need to get a place to stay and sleep. Think about all this some. All this is brand new to me and I’m trying to sort it out as I go along. You been sitting here sixty-some years waiting for someone to tell all this to. And I’m the one to do it to I guess. But right now, I’m about dead.”

Mebane looked at him. There was no disappointment in the look. He said, “Pret much everbody calls me Lex. Or Mister Lex.”

Foster nodded. “I’ll call you whatever you want. I just need to take care of myself now. Maybe I can see you tomorrow.”

“What sort of dogs are they?”

“Sir?”

“Your dogs.”

“Bird dogs. English setters.”

“Is that so?”

“Yuht. A mother and daughter. Good dogs. The one solid and the other started on partridge and woodcock. I thought, long as I’m coming down here, maybe I can find them some quail to work. Give them something new.”

From the trunk of the car he lifted a tin can of water and poured out what was left into a lard pail and let the dogs out to drink. The lard pail was half full when they started and they might have wanted more but they left a half inch of water sudsy with drool that neither dog would take. They did not want to get back in the car but he coaxed them up onto the backseat. They drove out of town into the country, under the railroad trestle and then turning where Alexander Mebane told him to, onto a narrow road, a wash of red clay dust rising around them, Mebane sitting up square and straight talking as they went.