That scared us and we decided to take his advice. Isom was smitten with a new colored girl at Everett’s named Aquanetta Jones. He set her up working the ticket office at the Roxie and she promised not to run with other men. I settled into an affair with Ruby Day, Everett’s daughter. She wasn’t a whore but her daddy’s business had certainly made an impression on her. She made few demands on me, and I liked that.

Daddy came up occasionally and I bought him a beer. It was the only way he could afford it.

“You come on back home anytime,” he always said. “You was a good buddy when you was working with me.”

But Talcott was the member of my family I saw most often. He came to Annadel every Saturday and stayed the night, for he was courting Pricie Justice, Isom’s little sister. Talcott, Isom and I had formed a band and played for pay in the places round about Annadel and up Lloyds Fork. Isom played the fiddle, Talcott the guitar, and I picked the banjo. We called ourselves the Blackberry Pickers. Some folks said we were the best in the county.

Talcott was saving the money he made from playing because he wanted to marry Pricie and move into his own house. He was sixteen, she was fourteen. We were drinking beer at Cesco Thompson’s on Lloyds Fork after a performance, and Isom had gone off to play cards, when Talcott told me of it.

“What does Ermel say?” I asked.

“I dont care what her old man says. We’re gitting married.”

“Dont you think you ought to ask Ermel?”

He shrugged. “I reckon. But sometimes he says things about me hanging around too much. Maybe he thinks a coal miner aint good enough for her.”

“Naw, Ermel aint no snob. Maybe he just thinks you’re too young. Besides, you dont have to stay down in the mines. Ermel can take you on to work for him.”

Talcott lit a cigarette, tapped his fingers on the table. “I aint interested in no soft job. I like it down there. Aint nobody on my back.”

He looked older than me. Pouches hung beneath his eyes and his nose was long and pinched.

“If I hadn’t left home,” I said, “you wouldn’t have worked in there with Daddy all these years.”

“Hell, I’d a gone in there sooner or later. What’s the difference?”

“You wasnt never mad at me?”

“Hell, no!”

He sucked on his cigarette. A blue heart was tattooed on the back of his right hand.

“Any of the boys at Winco talk about the union?”

He laughed. “Union? That’s just a bunch of fellers in offices up at Charleston. I dont need them to fight my battles.”