We sat in comfortable silence for a while before I posed a question. Bob knows the history and geography of the Low Country of Georgia and South Carolina as well as any local university professor. I was hoping he could help me out.

“Bob, you ever heard of—do you know anything about—a place called Panther Creek?” I asked.

Bob raised his eyebrows in surprise before lifting his glass for another drink. After a few seconds’ reflection he spoke.

“It’s up in Effingham County,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s where that girl—Tonya Causey—was from. The girl Danny Ray and I found in the marsh.”

“Uh-huh,” he replied. “But still—why do you ask?”

“Her mama came to see me. Asked if I’d look into what happened to her daughter. See if there was something there that the police had missed. She didn’t believe the girl had taken her own life.”

Bob nodded his head as he listened to my reply. I could see his mind working before he spoke again.

“Up in those mountains you come from, are there any places—small, remote places—where, if you don’t live there, it’s just best to stay out of?”

I thought, and two names immediately came to mind: Esom Hill and Booger Hollow. Tightly knit settlements, populated by just a few interrelated families, where the principal outlook on life is defined by suspicion of outsiders and a disdain for the rules of society.

“Yeah,” I replied with a nod of the head, “I know a few places like that.”

“Well, that’s what Panther Creek is: a place where nothing good ever happens, and nothing, or nobody, good ever comes from,” he said in a level voice, his eyes large behind the lenses of his glasses.

I let Bob’s words settle in my mind as I reflected on the rambling litany of Joree Causey’s life as she had related it to me the other night: a life infected by poverty, disappointment, and despair. And I also recalled what Cyriah had said, about how we all live on a different page of life, and that those of us on a certain page can almost never get off and move to another page.

I asked myself, Is that why things, generation after generation, seem never to change for people, regardless of where they’re planted in life? Does that explain the rut that most lives appear to be locked into? Is that why the poor, no matter what they do or how they strive, never seem to get ahead? And is that also why the wealthy and powerful, no matter how stupid, or venal, or criminal some of them may be, almost never slip from their positions of privilege?