Foster sat silent.

“Well,” Mebane said. “Goodnight then. Turn those lights off when you’re done setting there. I don’t trust that electric.”

He sat at the table for the time it took the sounds of the other life in the house to cease, the faint scrapings of movement from the second floor, the pad of uneven feet. Then a time more while the house settled to rest around him. He corked the bottle of whiskey still half full but drank off what was left of his own glass, left it there on the blotter as some rough evidence of the night for the morning and carried the bottle out with him, leaving the room dark behind him; also the kitchen where he paused before the dark to study the remains of the uneaten dinner—the jars of vegetables and the biscuits. It was not just food. He was pretty sure of that.

Outside the evening haze had thickened. There were no stars. It was still warm, the air heavy, a thing immediate to walk through, to breathe in. The rub of cicadas pierced the air as if the insects inhabited all living space. As if they would bore into his ears.

He let the dogs out of the slave cabin and kept the door open to sit and watch them, white ghosts scouting the fenced yard. Then left them be and lighted the lantern inside, leaving it on the floor as there was no place but the bed to set it otherwise. Went and knelt by the hearth and took up the snakeskin there and broke the segments apart in his hands. Dry hard shackles of some body passed by. Then reached into the hearth and rubbed one hand there. Squatting on his haunches. Just old stones, long cold.

The dogs came in and lay up on the bed and watched him. As if they wanted to see what he would do next. He turned and sat crosslegged on the floor with the lantern turned to a low wicker and looked back at them. He drank a little from the bottle of his father’s scotch.

Twice he went out across the yard through the gate to the Chrysler in the alley. He sat there and smoked cigarettes. He could take off the brake and hold down the clutch and coast silent down the alley to where it dropped to the street and there pop the clutch and drive off as quiet as driving could be. Out to the crossroads. Pettigrew. Where she said she would wait for him. He turned sideways on the seat and propped his feet up on the far side of the dash and with the bottle between his legs sat smoking. He had no idea why he did not go to her. Each time he went to the car he intended to leave and find her and each time he did not. Each time he left the car to return to the cabin where the lantern, the wick turned low, was blackening the chimney so the cabin grew more and more dim. Just shadows. Shadows of walls and floor and hearth and rising rough chimney stones and the jut of bed into the dim space and the two forms on the bed with their eyes yellow and pale as from another world watching him.