Did you see that building right across the street from the lot, the Southland Loan Company? That’s Mr. Harshaw’s.”

“And you work in the loan office—is that it?” I hadn’t seen her around the lot yesterday when I got the job.

She nodded. “I run it for him. Most of the time, that is.”

“I see.”

We were silent for a moment, and then she asked, “Where are you from, Mr. Madox?”

“Me? Oh, I’m from New Orleans.” It would do as well as any.

We hit the highway and went on down it for another ten miles. There were heavy stands of timber along here, and not much farming land. I remembered from driving up yesterday that it shouldn’t be too far now to the long highway bridge over the river. We turned off to the right before we got to it, though, taking a dirt road which led uphill through heavy pine. At the top there were a couple of farms, abandoned now, their yards grown up with weeds and bullnettles and the unpainted buildings staring vacantly at the road. The land began to drop away on the west side of the ridge and then we were in the river bottom, driving under big oaks, and it was a little cooler. Most of the sloughs were dried up now, in midsummer, and when we came out to the river itself it was low, with the sandbars showing, and fairly clear. After we crossed it, I stopped the car and got out and went back to stand on the end of the wooden bridge looking at it.

It was beautiful. The river came around a long bend above and slid over a bar into the big pool under the bridge. Part of the pool was in the shadow of the dense wall of trees along the bank and it looked dark and cool and deep. The only sound anywhere was a mockingbird practising his scales from a pin oak along the other bank. There was a peace here you could almost feel, like a hand touching you.

I went back to the car. As I got in she glanced at me questioningly. “Why did you stop?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to look at it.”

“It’s pretty, isn’t it? And peaceful.”

“Yeah,” I said.

I started the car. We went on across the bottom and up a sandy road through more timber on another hill.

“Who is this guy Sutton?” I asked. “A hermit? The car must have been worn out before he got home with it.”

She came out of her moody silence. “Oh. He’s the watchman at a well they started to drill back in here.”

“Watchman?” I asked. “Are they afraid somebody’ll steal a hole in the ground?”

“No. You see, it’s an oil well, and all the equipment is still over here. Tools, and things like that. They started it over a year ago and then there was some kind of lawsuit which stopped everything. Mr. Sutton lives on the place to look after it.”

“Do you know him? If he’s got a job, why doesn’t he pay off his car notes?”

She was looking down at her hands. “I just know him when I see him.