“I git tired of all that talk about education and progress,” he said.

“Aint you interested in bettering yourself?”

“‘Bettering yourself.’ Now there’s a phrase for you. You think your brother is a better man now than he was when he was hoeing corn?”

“He’s happier.”

“That aint the same thing. He’s happy at everybody else’s expense. Progress is always at somebody’s expense. Hit means putting everything in order till they’s no room to breathe. Progress means cleaning everything up. But I like things dirty.”

“You sound like a radical. You didn’t sound like one last night.”

“I didn’t want to git throwed out before I finished my cigar.”

We passed the houses, walked half a mile in the blue evening to the curve between lower Vulcan and upper Chieftan. Lightning bugs decorated the stickweeds and gnats bit my ankles and bare arms.

“We better turn back,” he said. “Aint nothing to see in Chieftan.”

I turned obediently, my arms clasped across my chest.

“How come you aint married?” he asked.

“I just aint found the right man,” I answered, shamed to tell him that I feared no one would want me, that in my three years at school no one had come courting.

“You look to me like you’re too independent,” he said. “You wouldnt take to a man bossing you around.”

The way he said it did not sound like a reproach.

“I can take care of myself,” I agreed proudly.

“Sure you can. I’m that a way, too.”

“I know. I like a man to talk the way you do.” I was afraid that sounded too forward, so I changed the subject. “Who are your kin? You still aint told me about them.”

“Aint much to tell. My daddy’s a broke down old coal miner. I got two little brothers. One of em’s married, got a youngun. He’s the only one I see much of.”

“What about your mama?”

“She dont care much for me. Aint never been able to please her.”

I felt a tenderness for him then, and an anger at his mother.

“Did I tell you I pick the banjo?”

“No, you never told me that.”

“I pick in a band with my brother and a buddy. We play all over in Kentucky. Inez. Warfield. Louisa. Even over to Shelby oncet. Call ourselves the Blackberry Pickers. I’ll take you to hear us sometime.”

“I’d love that.”

His crutches tapped the road.

“You like nursing?”

“Hit satisfies me to help sick folks feel better,” I said slowly. “And the human body is such a miracle. I study it and I think, ‘How could it all work?’ I seen babies borned. I seen dead bodies cut all apart by my teachers until they werent nothing left and I wondered what it was that run that body, that made them muscles move and them lungs breathe. Hit’s like an invisible fire running through us. Hit dont surprise me that the fire goes out. Hit’s where it come from that makes me ponder. And how we could feel things and think things, and us just a mess of muscle and fat. And ifn the fire comes from somewhere, then hit surely does go somewhere.”