John smiled. “He was a little surprised when I turned out to be black, looking like I did - and driving that BMW - but we’re all set,” he said. He stepped over to a black nylon briefcase, unzipped it, and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I gave him a cashier’s check for a thousand dollars for a thirteen-week option on six hundred acres, at nine hundred and twenty dollars an acre. He was asking a thousand, but I dickered a little. I still paid too much, though. I wanted to seem anxious but like I was trying to hide it. And I wanted him talking around town about how he stuck it to the city boy.”

“Does he seem like the sort to do that?” I asked. “I hope.”

“Actually, no,” John said with a grin. “He seemed like a pretty decent guy. But the real estate dealer was an asshole. She’ll talk. She asked me what I wanted the land for. I told them my heritage was in cotton farming and I was thinking of going back to it. She had to stick her hankie in her mouth to keep from laughing. I was wearing the wing tips. They figure I’m a crack dealer from Memphis

“

“OK,” I said. “So the word’ll be around.”

From the bed, Marvel was saying, “If Outhouse is the bar payments, what’s Suburb?’”

“Sounds like they’re getting it,” John said.

It took three hours to nail down the printouts. Davis, who’d seemed frail when I first met him, was as intense as Marvel or Harold, and they often deferred to him. But not always. There was one heated argument over a series of entries on recreational fees. The entries might have exposed the Reverend Dodge, and Marvel didn’t want to take the risk. Davis, who apparently hated Dodge, did. Marvel won.

John whispered: “That woman can talk the bark off a tree.”

“How’s your

uh, relationship?”

John glanced covertly at Marvel, then looked back at me. “I’m trying as hard as I can, man. Sometimes I think she’s about to haul my butt back to the bedroom, but then

I mean, Jesus, this is takin’ longer than it has with any woman I ever met.”

“Is she real, or is she teasing?”

“She’s real, I think.”

“Then that’s probably a good sign,” I said. “All the time

“

“You think so?”

We both looked at Marvel and realized that everybody in the room was looking at us. We’d been whispering in a way that immediately attracts attention.

“Uh, we didn’t want to bother you, talking,” John said.

“Uh-huh,” said Marvel.