Louise sank down on the rotten step and gazed out across the lake with her hands limp in her lap; Lily wheeled around and stared wide-eyed into the gloom of the cluttered room; and the old woman sat down heavily on the top step and grabbed Louise by the knee.

“I am exhausted,” the old woman said. “I have congestive heart failure, and any little thing like that will wear me slap out.”

It took them different ways. Louise, feeling a maniacal need to establish some kind of order, fell into a patter of formal good manners, introducing herself and giving a brief nonsensical synopsis of their mission here: their long drive, no place for the ashes, the spoon player, the Chautauqua building—“and this is my younger sister, Lily.”

But Lily wouldn’t stop staring into the house. For some reason, with that whack and flop she had felt the banjo player lifted out of her mind for the first time in months, and images of the cluttered room rushed in to fill the unfamiliar vacancy: clumps of heavy furniture, a crumpled chandelier slouched in a corner like a giant spider, a clothes rack draped with white cotton underwear.

The spoon player finally brought them back to their senses, bouncing around the corner of the house with the duck, picked, drawn, and singed. He rinsed it at the spigot, laid it out in a black skillet, and set it down on the porch beside the old woman, who picked out one last pinfeather.

“They come up from the lake and fly down the chimney,” she said to Louise, “and we eat them.”

“Oh,” gasped Louise. “That makes sense.” And she and the old woman settled down quite companionably on the steps with the duck in its skillet and the ashes in their gold-toned urn between them, getting everything straight—“So you are Lila Martin’s girls; I had a cousin who married a Martin,” the old woman said, and “That was Sid Stringer’s monkey, he only loved two things, beer and watermelon,” and “Yes, that’s the spoon player, he keeps a lightbulb screwed in over at the Chautauqua tower, looks after us somewhat.”