You can be home more.” This seeking may have been what was happening anyway.

Yet if there was ever going to be a job change—to a hardware in Little Rock, or back to stocking lettuce, or a return to Atkins—this would’ve been a moment. The Depression was behind them. The war was on, but would be over. Better times were possible. But there was no thought of changing that I ever heard about. The selling job was too good. And he was too good at it. Instead, they would choose a place—in the middle, as he’d been told—and live there. Being on the road together for those years was over.

It must be said they were not people to pore over decisions. Having discretion over a great deal meant less to them, having never had much of it. A place on the earth to live was not a spiritual matter, but a practical one. His family were immigrants. He traveled for a living. Her family were backwoods itinerants. The two of them had kept the apartment on Center Street but rarely slept there. They had no great experience of residence. It might’ve been a small matter where they decided to go to have their baby. Me.

They thought first of New Orleans, where they liked it. It was not central, but life seemed possible there. Barney Rozier and Marie were in Gentilly—the suburbs—in a four-room, flat-roof, aqua-tinted stucco house with a tiny lawn. They had seen what that was, but chose against it. Jackson, Mississippi, was just up the road. They knew two people there, though not well. It must’ve seemed less exotic, more normal—which it was. It was the middle of where he drove to—Alabama, north Louisiana, south Arkansas. Plus, Jackson was nearer to Little Rock, and in a way like it. A small, southern capital. To be able to choose might’ve felt good. Grown-up—finally. They would be far enough away from everybody—his family and hers.