Eleanor called the old woman Granny, but had given the name of Beatrice Cunningham to Noah in making an introduction that was one-sided since the old woman did not lift her face to acknowledge him.

“She’s not feeling all that well today,” Eleanor said in a kind way. “I’ll give her some candy later on.” Then, remembering she had bought candy on her first meeting of Noah, she added, “Hershey bars. She likes Hershey bars. Sometimes I think it’s Hershey bars that keeps her alive. Maybe I should write to them and give them a testimonial.”

They ate slowly, employing manners that seemed necessary to ease the discomfort each of them felt. The talk offered was mostly from Eleanor. Small talk with long gaps of silence, and though she made an attempt to have Noah say something of his life, she realized quickly he was a quiet and reluctant man.

He said only that he had been born in Elbert County, Georgia, had grown up there with his parents and his brother, helping his father sharecrop the farm where they lived. For two years after the death of his father, he had farmed the land on his own before leaving for the war. Said his mother had died while he was away, and when he returned from the war, another family was living on the farm, sharecropping. And then he had taken up fishing. When asked about his brother, he replied, “He’s still in Elbert County.” He did not say his brother was in jail.

What he offered was said with so few words that much of it was assumed, not spoken, leaving Eleanor to fill space with a story of her own life—born in Georgia, the third child of a three-child family. Her parents still lived near Hiawassee, she said. Her siblings—two sisters—were married, both living with their husbands in Gainesville. One was a nurse, another a teacher. Her parents were readers, a habit each of their children had acquired, which explained the long shelves of books that lined the walls of her home. She and her sisters had a kind of lending library system, swapping books after they had been read, but neither of her sisters had as many bookcases as she did.

“Boyd made them for me when he came home,” she said. “It’s about all he did for months—work on this house. He was doing carpentry work before the war—that and trying to farm, but he was better at building things than growing things.” She paused, smiled, added, “Put in a bathroom and wired everything for electricity, which is something I didn’t think we’d ever get, and then he got them to run a telephone line in with it. After that, he put in the bookcases. He just got up one morning and left and came back with all the lumber and started building.” She paused. “He knew I liked to read.” Another pause. “Do you?” she asked.

It was a question that had always made Noah uncomfortable. He had never read a book—not a long one—start to finish. Reading was not easy for him, the words vanishing from memory as soon as his eyes passed over them. What he knew, he had learned from listening and watching. His teachers had passed him along, grade to grade, with tiresome sighs and with whispers about him being slow-witted, and he had accepted their judgment.