They sat squeezed by the stacks of papers and ledgers at the dining room table to eat a supper of tinned soup and saltines. Mebane had opened two cans of the soup and heated it in a rinsed pot on the electric coil of the hotplate and then just poured off a skim of soup into his own bowl and filled the one set out for Foster so that Foster had to use both hands and a slow stride to carry it without spilling in to where they would eat. A box of saltines under his arm. Mebane behind him, the cane hooked over his elbow as he carried his own bowl. Then they sat and ate. Tomato soup made with water because there was no milk but delicious. He made himself slow down for the last third so it would be enough. Mebane broke crackers into his bowl and stirred them and Foster waited a spoonful or two and then did the same. It was awful good.

Mebane said, “It’s not much but it’s what I have.”

“It’s just fine. It’s good.”

“I know how sad and thin most things are compared to what you expect them to be. I haven’t answered the first question that you had. What answers I do have may not bring any satisfaction at all either. The thing is, what answers I have are my own. They’re what you get. Anything beyond that, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

Foster took up the last soaked cracker piece with his spoon and ate it. Put the spoon down in the empty bowl and looked at the old man. “I can tell you this. Time comes you’re talking and I feel like you’re holding back, I’ll tell you.”

Mebane said, “I guess you will. I guess most certainly you will.”

He took the lighted lantern and tick mattress to the cabin and then went out to the car. He released the dogs and opened the trunk for the bedroll and blankets and his old withered valise. He went back across the dark yard into the cabin and set the lantern on the floor where it spread a small low pillage of light up the walls. He dumped his belongings on the sleeping platform and went to the open door where he could see the dogs, out roaming in the fenced yard, pale shades in the dark. There was an upstairs light on in the house and that was all. He wondered how the old man would sleep and wondered the same for himself. He turned back into the cabin and took the valise off the bed and spread out the bedroll and the blankets. And turned then to regard the snakeskin on the hearth. He only knew grass-snakes. This was bigger than he wanted to think about. He didn’t want to pick it up, to touch it. He called the dogs in and shut the door. There was a latch, a bar on the inside to drop into a worn piece of angle-wood set into the timbered wall. He slid it to. The wood was dry and smooth under his fingers. He wondered if there had been nights it had been left off. Or how easily a penknife could slip in to lift it up.