He was a fierce-looking old man slightly stooped wearing dungarees and a blue chambray workshirt. The shirt was faded a pale blue from repeated laundering and he had the top button fastened against his Adam’s apple. On his head he wore a canvas porkpie hat cocked over one bristling eyebrow and the hat and his washed-out blue eyes were almost the exact hue of his shirt. Who are you people and what are you doing hēre?

I’m Pamela Choat and I’m sunbathin, the girl said, misunderstanding or in the old man’s view pretending to. I’m gettin me a tan. Mama’s hangin out clothes and Daddy’s around here somewhere.

I mean what are you even doin here? Why are you here?

The girl put her sunglasses back on and turned her oiled face to the weight of the sun. We live here, she said.

That can’t be. I live here, this is my place.

You better talk to Mama, the girl said. Behind the opaque lenses of the sunglasses perhaps her eyes were closed. Meecham turned. The woman was crossing the yard toward him. He noticed with a proprietary air that the grass needed cutting. He’d been gone less than two months and already the place was going to seed.

Ain’t you Mr. Meecham?

I certainly am, the old man said. He leaned on his walking stick. The stick was made to represent a snake and the curve he clasped was an asp’s head. I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance.

I’m Mrs. Choat, she said. Ludie Choat, Lonzo’s wife. You remember Lonzo Choat.

Lord God, the old man said.

We rented this place from your boy.

The hell you say.

Why yes. We got a paper and everything. We thought you was in the old folk’s home in Perry County.

I was. I ain’t no more. I need to use the telephone.

We ain’t got no telephone.

Of course there’s a telephone. We always had a telephone.

The woman regarded him with a bland bovine patience, as if she were explaining something to a somewhat backward child. There was a curiously blank look about her, the look of the innocent or the deranged. There’s one but it don’t work. You can’t talk on it. It ain’t hooked up or somethin. You need to talk to Lonzo.