Foster left the old man to his burning and went through into the kitchen where he stood at the sink washing up from the night before. Wiping down the counters. He fried eggs on the electric coil and toasted bread and laid the food out on plates. The work made him melancholy, the rain against the windows. The meals he’d cooked alone or for his father, the water dripping off the tamaracks and hemlocks. He was a long way from home. Even if the house was still there, even if it was his, it seemed long gone. He was terribly sad. It seemed the farther he went the less he had.

He carried the plates into the dining room and silent put them down. Took up the glasses from the night before and carried them to the kitchen. The fire was burning well now, Mebane standing to the side of the fireplace, a couple of sticks of wood atop the stacked ledgers. The room was warm, drying the moisture from the air. Foster came back in and together they sat and ate.

Mebane mopped eggyolk with breadcrust. “I thought you’d be out running all night.”

“No sir. I stayed in.”

Mebane nodded as if they’d agreed upon something. “I was awake myself much of the night. Pitch and thrash. Then just about daybreak the time I got to sleep that girl called me up to make sure I hadn’t killed you or run you off.”

“Daphne called here?”

“Wasn’t you supposed to meet her?”

“It wasn’t anything firm.”

“Un-huh,” Mebane said. “Are you going to run off on her? Treat her bad? Time comes you’re done with me?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Mebane looked at him. “Life is a misery, isn’t it?”

“Seems like.”

“You’re lucky, you know.”

“How’s that?”

“Most people, it takes up half their life or more to figure that out.”

“I don’t know. There’s ones that seem to do all right. That it seems things work out all right for.”

“All that is, is them not paying attention.”

“Could be luck.”

“Is that what you’re thinking? Luck? Let me tell you. Unless you get hit in the head, every one of us sooner or later comes down to lying there reworking each and every inch of our lives. Gasping for breath. Imagine how that is—to not be able to draw breath. And you lie there wondering what mercy the Lord can provide. Because it’s clear the tired old earth is out of mercy if it ever had any to start with. And the Lord, the Lord He is silent. He don’t go peep. Now tell me, what kind of luck is that?”

Foster grinned at him. “Not much I guess.”

“It’s not funny. Not much is right. Look over there in the fireplace. You know what that is burning up?”

“No sir.”