It was almost five when I finished the washing and putting away of dishes and glasses and silverware and pots and pans and had mopped the slime from the floor. I was covered in soap water and perspiration. My hands and arms were numb.

I went to one of the swinging doors and pressed my ear against it. I could not hear anything and I opened the door slightly and looked inside. I did not see anyone, but the dining rooms seemed cool and fresh and inviting. Each table was perfectly dressed with a pressed, white tablecloth, and white cloth napkins trimmed in a narrow pink border were at each place setting. The napkins were folded to look like the sails of sailing ships. There was a sweet, clean scent of laundry in the air.

It was quiet in the dining room.

I went out of the side door onto the platform-porch, which was crowded with huge garbage cans, and I sat wearily on the steps. My muscles ached. I could smell the detergent caked into my shirt. I leaned back against the railing and looked up at the mountain behind the Inn. I saw a deer, a buck crowned with a majestic rack of antlers, standing beside a white birch tree. The deer was beautiful and I knew instantly that I would never forget him. He was like a painting that I had done in another time, another existence. I thought the deer was studying me, asking with his deer eyes, “Who are you?”

A quivering sadness fell over me. I thought: I am Madison Lee Murphy—Bobo Murphy. I am from Georgia, the son of William and Coretta Murphy. I am a Southerner. People speak English where I live. They are not mean, like these Yankees.

The deer lifted his head as if he had heard me. He stroked the wind with his face.

I closed my eyes. The warm, late-afternoon sun struck the steps where I was sitting and it felt good across my head and shoulders. It was like the sun of the Georgia fields. My body began to surrender to the begging need for rest. I could hear my classmates’ laughter from Washington. Laughter and one weeping voice: Carolyn. I wanted to be with her, to lace my fingers with her fingers. On our last night together in New York, I had confessed that I wanted to marry her, and she had held to me and cried joyfully and had whispered, “Yes, oh, yes…” The memory of that moment swam around me. It was as warm as the sun on my head and shoulders. And then I slept.

A hard bump jarred me awake and I stood quickly.

A large truck with a steel body was there, backed against the platform-porch. I had not heard it drive into the side yard. I watched as a man got out of the cab and lit a cigarette. He was tall and lean-muscled. A scar angled from his temple to his cheek. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and a trucker’s cap. The belt at his waist had a bronze, snap-open buckle with the face of a bear stamped into it. There was a dangerous look about him.