He’ll be up here directly.

I’m an old man, Meecham said. I may die directly. Where is he and I’ll just go to him.

He’s down there in the barn fixin a tire.

Choat was in the hall of the barn and he seemed locked in mortal combat with the flat tire. He was stripped to the waist and he was wringing wet with sweat. His belly looped slackly over the waistband of his trousers but his shoulders and back were knotted with muscle. He had a crowbar jammed between the tire and rim and was trying to pry it free. Then he held the crowbar in position with a foot and tried to break the tire loose from the rim with a splitting hammer. Meecham noticed with satisfaction that it showed no sign of giving.

When the old man s shadow fell across the chaff and straw and dried manure of the hall Choat looked up. Some dark emotion, dislike or hostility or simply annoyance, flickered across his face like summer lightning and was gone. Choat laid the splitting hammer aside and squatted in the earth. He wiped sweat out of his eyes and left a streak of greasy dirt in the wake of his hand. Meecham suddenly saw how like a hog Choat looked, his red porcine jowls and piggy little eyes, as if as time passed he had taken on the characteristics of his namesake.

You not got a spare?

This is the spare. I believe I know you. You’re lawyer Meecham’s daddy. We heard you was in a nursin home. What are you doin here?

I didn’t take to nursin, Meecham said. Is it true that Paul rented you folks this place?

He damn sure did. A ninety-day lease with a option to buy.

The old man felt dizzy. He was almost apoplectic with rage. He felt he was going to have a seizure, a stroke, some kind of attack. The idea of Choat eating at his table, sleeping in his bed was bad enough; the idea that he might own it, call it his, was not to be borne.

Buy? You wasn’t ever nothin but a loafer. You never owned so much as a pair of pliers. That’s my wreckin bar and splittin hammer right there. And if you think you can buy a farm this size with food stamps you’re badly mistaken.

Choat just shook his head. He grinned. A drop of sweat beaded on the end of his nose, fell. Blackheads thick as freckles fanned out from his eyes and there were black crescents of dirt beneath his fingernails.

You still as contrary as you ever was. You remember the time I tried to rent that lit old tenant shack from you?

No.

You wouldn’t rent it to me. Ain’t life funny?

I never rented that house to anybody. It was built too close to the main house to begin with and there wouldn’t have been any privacy for either place.