“Well,” I said, “best of luck. I think you’d make a fine mayor.”

“Thanks for saying so.”

“And after that?”

“Let’s win first.”

That word—“let’s”—gave me a jolt, not unlike the one I’d felt the first time Arch shook my hand; the first time he said “Hey, bud”; the first time he called me “brother.”

I took a walk around the farm that afternoon with Jim. He had lost a dramatic amount of weight. The old fullback’s neck was thin, his shoulders were sloped, and the shock of cropped black hair was silvery and longish. He moved slower, took shorter strides.

“I want to thank you for coming,” he said.

“I should have come a long time ago,” I said.

“You didn’t know.”

“I don’t blame you for not telling me until now,” I said. “I was a terrible brat the last time we spoke. I’m sorry.”

“You were a boy,” he said. “You had a right to be hurt. I didn’t think enough about how you would take it. I was too much in love. I didn’t try as hard as I should have. I only wanted your mother to be happy.”

“She seems to have been pretty happy.”

“Yes,” he said. “But she missed you every day.”

“You’ll understand if I find that hard to believe.”

“Let me show you something.”

We rounded the barn and made our way back toward the house through the vegetable gardens—a project of my mother’s, Jim said. As we neared the house, I mentioned Arch’s mayoral candidacy.

“I’m not sure it’s the best thing,” Jim said.

“I assumed he had your support.”

“Clem Cardwell’s an old friend,” Jim said.

“Do you mean to say you’re not backing him?” I said. “Arch, I mean.”

“He’s my godson, and my son-in-law. Blood comes first. But I advised him to wait, or look at another opportunity. It’s Clem’s turn. He has more of a centrist appeal anyway. It’s hard for a Republican to win anything in Davidson County. Regardless, I’m giving Arch my full support. But he doesn’t have all of Clem’s advantages.”

“You think he’s going to lose.”

“I didn’t say that.”

We reached the house, on the end where they’d added a new sunporch and a corner with a wet bar built into the wall. Jim led me back through a large door, into a drawing room with a steep vaulted ceiling, the walls adorned with dozens of framed paintings.

Scanning the walls, I became overwhelmed with emotion. Every one of them—I counted twenty-four—was mine.

“Did you get these from Pancho?”

“Pancho?” he asked.

“Eugene Craddock,” I said. “He represents me. His friends call him Pancho.”

“I see. No, we didn’t get them directly. I have a buyer.”