“You’ve got an answer for everything.”

“I try to understand these things.”

“How can you? After you’ve already decided what they are?”

“I try to understand you.”

She shuddered exaggeratedly. “Crated and mailed,” she said. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

He embraced her suddenly. “I try, but I don’t,” he said humbly. “Don’t be so mad at me—you can’t wander around through a lifetime leaving everything an open question. Look at you! Don’t you think you tried to find a system when you were hanging around the Reds?”

“It wasn’t that,” she muttered, her head resting against his shoulder. “Something else…”

“You can’t ask people not to have a viewpoint—to simply look, the way you do. One of these days, you’ll have to come to some conclusions—you’ll have to be thickheaded and convinced, just like the rest of us.”

She hardly heard him, but she was no longer angry. She thought of Uncle Greg who had no answers for earthly matters, who believed in God’s heaven.

“You must make judgments,” Mike said. “How can a person live without them?”

They packed and made sure the fire was out. Mike went to pay the couple who ran the little cabin community. On their long descent to the warmer regions, Mike spoke accusingly and restlessly about her leaving California. She was simply being ruled by impulse. Her life wasn’t bad out here. Now that the war was over, things would be getting better, more opportunities, she might think of going to school. Had she ever thought of becoming a nurse? Or a laboratory technician? She was very observant—she’d be good at that, lab work. He could help—

“No. I’m going.”

“It’s because you’re so young.”

“That must be it.”

Melvin helped her with Theda’s table and the boxes of books. He had a friend with a pickup truck. Melvin had a year to go on his six-year hitch. What would he do after that?

“Maybe Basie remembers me,” he said. “I’ll get myself a good spot somewhere. I’ve saved a little money. My, how the old days have gone! You remember what nice times we had? Playing cards up at Cletus’s with old Miranda! Those were the good times, weren’t they? I’ve had a lot of good times and a lot of bad times and I don’t know which is coming up now. You’re taking off too, and that’s what I’d like to be doing but I got to finish out my time. I saw Cletus last week, but he don’t have much time for me now. He’s got a column he’s going to write for some newspaper. He asked me if I’d seen you around, but I’ll tell you, Annie, it’s not the same old Cletus we knew. Nothing’s the same now.”

She was getting ready to go. She had the car checked and the garage mechanic said she might get to Texas without trouble, after that, he didn’t know. She had thought there would be so much to do, but after all, there wasn’t so much. Some of the people she’d known had disappeared; some had died, some had changed.