Still raining, hard. The fire burned down, the room hot and close. The long windows steamed inside and oily from driven rain, the room at midmorning dark as dawn. Foster stiff, holding himself from motion, wet under his arms, his skin rippling in the moisture and heat with recoil. Looking down at the stained green blotter. He could not recall when he’d taken his eyes from the old man seated up close beside him. The smell in the room strong of the old body, astringent, sour, blooded, as if some must, some musk, came off the old man as he talked, rising up in pitch as he went on, the smell one of decay and excitement all at once. All Foster wanted was away. He dreaded the old man reaching out that one claw hand to touch him someway, to draw his attention, his eyes back to that bitter bright maniac old face. He did not move.

Quiet but for the lash and splatter of rain. Time to time the low fire settled and would pop, some small chuckle of fire. After a long silent while, Mebane rose up groaning from his chair, leaning on the cane. He hitched his way around the table to the grate, where he took up the poker and stirred the sifting coals. The movement a terrible labor. As if sitting so long had crippled him more. And Foster thought maybe this was the old man’s natural gait, that his liveliness, his seeming ability of the past days, had been an effort. Some illusion for Foster. Or even for both of them. To get through it. To get here.

Finally Foster spoke. “So what was it? What did you tell her?”

Mebane’s one hand was up on the slender dark wood mantelpiece over the fireplace. Slowly he turned and leaned forward, his body a crane up over the tripod of the cane and his two feet. He smiled at Foster.

“Why, boy, I had to give her something. Her coming that long way and all. I had to give her something for the effort. And she knew about that old nigger Peter, what happened to him. So it was an easy place to start. What I told Leah, what I told your grandmother, was that after those boys done that way with Peter her mama and I had a little talk. It was Helen anyway tended me with my bashed-in head and mashed ear. It was a bad time. Everything was gone to hell. She was too scared to run. She’d seen Peter after they were done with him. She was still a young woman, even to a boy like me. That high fine round ass. Oh my. It was a beautiful story. It had Leah stunned right back down sitting on the bed still just wrapped in a sheet. And me standing there with my trousers back up, still feeling her against me as I told her how I’d made her mother my woman for fifteen years. Told her my father, our father, was dead. So Helen was my woman then. My housekeeper yes but my woman as well. Whenever I wanted her, however way. It was some moment, I can tell you. Grace is what comes to mind. All of it, as I told her, I could see it. Some rarefied moment of the mind. It makes you wonder what makes truth, where truth begins or ends. Because what I was telling her became my memory as I told her and I stood with the words coming and saw it becoming her memory too. It was lovely. I could not stop.