“Where’re we going here?” Foster said.

“Why, along a bit, just along a little bit. This is all Pettigrews’ anyhow. My sister’s boys’ land. See that there, that stand of pine, it used to be real good in there when it was young but grown up like it is and choked out a man and dog couldn’t hardly get through it. They get around to logging it out and it’ll be some kind of good again though. Those birds they love that new young growth. There now, there’s the house. No, no, don’t pull in there, we don’t need to see those people. Just go on. It’s not far, the place I’ve got in mind. It’s a cornfield and a beanfield with a little bottom between them, little creek there in the bottom. This time of day, that’s where you’ll find the birds.”

The house they passed was set up away from the road under a pair of red oaks with low sheds and barns scattered around it. The house two stories four-square with a deep porch the length of the front, a stamped tin roof painted silver. An older hard-used Ford up under one of the trees. Fields of tobacco spread out either side of the farmyard with a scrub pasture running down to the road. All under the thin pale red-hazed sunlight, the land a muted charcoal with the light over it.

They went on past more fields either side of the road broken by pieces of woodlot; some hardwood bottoms and others pine plantations on the rising land between the fields. They went through a crossroads with a handful of unpainted rough houses with pumps in the bare dirt yards and dull-colored laundry on lines, dust rising up from the passing car to settle down over the clothes. A meager store with cracked yellow blinds pulled against sun. Opposite the store was a one-story-long building not much different from the shack houses but for its coat of white paint and the bright blue painted door set in the center of the front. From the peak rose a simple small cross of painted two-by-four. A handpainted sign: MOUNT OLIVE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. Negro children stopped play to watch the car pass. A man in overalls stood at the roadside, watching the children until the car was past, and then turned to watch until it was gone from sight.

“What’s that called?”

“What?”

“That place we just went through.”

Mebane glanced over at him. Looked back ahead. Straight into the spreading diffuse sun. “Crossroads. Pettigrew Crossroads.”

“What I could see. They all are colored.”

Mebane shrugged, a small gesture of head and one shoulder. “It’s all Pettigrews.”