He fingered it open, took out a single sheet of paper, read:

I’m tired of waiting. I want my money. You play around with me and you’ll be sorry you did. You think I won’t put out the word on you, you got another think coming. I guess a lot of people would like to know about all that stuff you took in the war. I know you sold it all. You got $3,000 dollars of mine and I’m coming up there to get it and this time I’m not putting on about buying that nothing farm you got. You never would have got that stuff back here without me covering for you. You have my money ready for me and I mean it.

The letter was signed Garland.

Noah folded the sheet quickly and slipped it back into the envelope. He looked at the postmark, saw the date as August 3, 1947. And then he put the envelope back into the ammunition box.

TWENTY-FIVE

According to Peavo, the greatest gift God had ever given mankind, other than Jesus, was the fish fry.

His reasoning was simple: it filled the soul as well as the belly.

“A man that don’t feel better after a plateful of fried fish and hush puppies and coleslaw, ought to be talking to the undertaker,” Peavo declared in a voice loud enough to carry beyond his table in the school dining room, and then, realizing he had mentioned an undertaker on a day that carried sorrow in it, he sputtered, “Well, maybe not that, but he ought to be worried.”

His correction earned some smiles and a whisper from Moody: “Put some pepper on your toes, Peavo. That’ll keep your feet out of your mouth.”

Peavo bent to his plate, feeling the sting of embarrassment.

It was now late, night coming fast, and the smell of fried fish coated the air of the school lunchroom. At the table next to Peavo and Moody and their families, Lamar and Arlene Gathers sat with Taylor and Eleanor and Whitlow and Grant Webster and his wife, Reba. Grant Webster was the minister of the Church of the Resurrected Christ. He had given the blessing of the food—a blessing far shorter than his Sunday morning prayers—thanking God for the day and for the fellowship of those who had caught the fish and for the gifts of those who had prepared it. He had also asked God to comfort Howard and Ada and Milton Reynolds, saying, “Give them the peace of knowing you are holding young Matthew against your bosom and have graced him with all-knowing.”

The prayer had ended with a mumbled round of amens.

It was, Lamar Gathers had announced in his short speech, the largest turnout in the history of Fishing Day, and the school had profited enough to buy some playground equipment, maybe even field a softball team.

He had congratulated Littleberry Davis for his seventh consecutive year of winning the prize money, though Littleberry was not around to hear the praise. He had taken his fish plate and left, someone had reported.