His voice was thin and whispery, like cornhusks rustling together. I reckon when I’m gone they’ll doze this mess down and plant it all.

Boyd smoked in silence. The momentum that had carried him for days, for miles, settled upon him like an enormous weight, and he was seized with weariness. Now that he was here he saw that he had reached not some final destination but simply a waystation that had drawn him miles in the wrong direction. If she was here he would have read it in the old man’s face, but nothing at all was written there, not even what Boyd had expected; bitter recriminations, who knew what. All there was was a stoic calm he didn’t know what to make of. As if the old man had come to some kind of terms. Then he studied the face closer. The yellowed skin was drawn tight across the cheekbones, the face sunken and caved, the blade of nose like something an undertaker had sculpted of wax then studied with a critical eye. All in all the old man looked like something recovered from the earth in gross resurrection and set arock on this porch in the middle of a cottonfield.

Boyd drew on the cigarette. You been sick, Ira? His voice was blued and furred by the smoke.

I’m fixin to die. I got a cancer.

Well I reckon you finally got something everybody else didn’t get one of first, Boyd thought. I hope you’re satisfied.

What’s it of?

I got it in my lungs. I wish you’d put out that cigarette. I ain’t let to smoke, and it makes me want one.

Boyd toed the cigarette out in the packed earth yard, a small vicious black smear. A lamp was lit inside, he could smell the smoky burning kerosene. He had forgotten about the old woman, but now he could sense her presence, see her bulk vaguely outlined against the screen of the door.

You afoot, the old man said. I knowed your walk the minute I seen you. You always walked like you had the world in your hip pocket. You ain’t though, have you? Last time I seen you you was in a fine car. You had big plans.

Times is hard, Boyd said.

Times is always hard for some, the old man observed.

They sat in silence. Boyd was watching a blur of cypress past the cottonfield and beyond the cypress soundless lightning flickered the sky to a pale metallic rose. After a while a whippoorwill called out of the trees like something Boyd had been listening for without knowing it, or even some sound he’d summoned by sheer will, and he felt he’d crossed the entire state just to hear this lone whippoorwill mocking him out of the falling dark, and now he must turn around and go back the way he’d come.

How’s that chap? the old woman said through the screen door. He must be about grown by now.

He’s right at seventeen.

Who’s he favor? We never had no picture nor nothin.

He looks a right smart like his mama.

She ain’t here, the old man said suddenly. I reckon you’ve made a long trip for nothin.

If she ain’t here I have. And you ain’t seen her?

The last time I seen her her belly was swole up with that boy you spoke of and you was helpin her into that fine car. Looks like several things has changed since then.

Boyd stood up. He brushed dry flakes of tobacco off the front of his dungarees. He looked back the way he’d come. A dim wagon road fading out in the cottonfield.