“Where does Walking John Gay live?” I asked.

“Wherever he pegs his hat,” Uncle Jolly grumbled. “One thing though, he’s got sense to do his walking of a day. Ma goes hoot-owl hunting night-times. Oh, I’ve seed Walking John a dozen times over, meeting him places you’d never expect to see a body. Once I went a-courting on Redbird River, and I come on him walking along pitching pebble-rocks, keeping six in the air, catching and a-pitching. And I says: ‘Looky here, John Walkabout, where air ye forever going? What air ye expecting to see you’ve never saw yet? Hain’t the head o’ one holler pine-blank like the next ’un?’”

“Once he come walking along Lean Neck Creek,” Grandma said. “I recollect it was Ruling Day in February, years ago. John Gay was mighty nigh froze teetotal. We punched the cannel-coal fire till it was white hot, and he sot there groaning while he thawed. Boone got him to eat a snack at the table. He wiggled in the chair, not being broke to taking ease, punishing to go.

“‘Now just hold your horses,’ Boone told him. ‘I got a bundle o’ questions to ask you who’ve traveled these mountains.’ And he ‘gin to ask a sight: ‘What about them bee-gum rocks in the breaks of the Big Sandy? Tell where’s that beech tree standing Dan’l Boone whittled his name on? I’m blood kin to ol’ Dan’l. Have you seed a single pair o’ wild pigeons the earth Over?’

“Boone asked questions till dark. I fed the stock and milked. I done all, and when I went in they was still talking. I remember how John Gay walked back and forth before the fire, me and Boone listening; Alpha and Jolly drinking every word. I recollect things he said: ‘They’s a world o’ dirt flowed under my feet. I never crawled when I was a baby. Just riz up and walked at ten months. I’m a-mind to see every living hill against I die.’ “

Grandma wiped her eyes with the hem of her skirt. They watered a bit as she remembered Grandpa. She uncurled her hands before the stove. Hot grease chattered in the skillet. Uncle Jolly caught up a spoonful of corn batter, dropping it into the grease. The boiling fat became as shrill as a flock of starlings.

“Your night-hawking days are over,” Uncle Jolly warned. “You’re going to stay abed nights if I have to nail the doors.”

The fritters were turned; they browned and were stacked high on a plate. And then we sat at the table. We ate the fritters with new poplar-bloom honey; we blew across saucers of black coffee to cool them before drinking.