“There is plenty think I’m queer. But not the way you mean. A bale shy of a load is what they mean. But no, to answer your question. My own needs are unfulfilled and will always be that way. They are beyond the reach of life is what they are.”

His arm was what Foster thought he was speaking of. Foster pushed back his chair and stood, taking up his empty plate. He said, “I’m going to get a little more of this food. Can I bring you something?”

“Eat it all. I believe I’ve had enough of it.” He pushed his plate, still with dots of food, away from him. “What you can do is carry this into the kitchen for me. So I don’t have to sit looking at it.”

“I can do that.” Foster lifted up the other plate.

“What else you can do you’re out there in the kitchen? I could use a little drink. If I recall, down in the cabinet under the sink, back behind the bottles of soap and disinfectant and all that mess I don’t bother with anymore, back of all that I think you’ll find a fruit jar with a little corn liquor in it. You could bring that in to me along with a glass. Two, if you want some. I know you’re no stranger to it.”

Foster carried the plates through that silent door that each time he passed through left him feeling he’d moved some great distance he could only guess at. He set both plates down in the sink and then stood over the sink and with his hands ate three more pieces of the beef, the gravy thick on his hands, all of it ripe with seasoning. Then ate a biscuit and rinsed his hands. Looked out the window set in over the sink into the reflection of himself in the dark glass. Wondered how many times his grandmother had done the same thing. And her mother. And what they had seen looking back at them. He dried his hands on the old piece of sacking Mebane had used to wipe the plates. Took up the tin of leftover meat and gravy and stepped with it outside and stood silent a moment before his dogs came up out of the dusk. Then set the tin on the ground, pausing bent as they began to eat to run his hands over their backs. Unmindful of him, the dogs gulping at the food, swallowing pieces of beef whole without chewing, each wanting to get someway ahead of the other. Dogs knowing no one would wait for them to catch up, mother-daughter or not.