was very cold for this time of year. From there they walked, carrying a paper sack each, without coats and Silas in his overlarge shoes, for two miles along a dirt road. He was shivering by the time they stepped over an old chain and headed down what seemed little more than a path, trees high on both sides and blocking the clouds. When they came to the hunting cabin in the middle of the field surrounded by woods, Alice Jones spoke her first words to her son since the diner.

“Find some wood,” she said.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, his head full of the past, here in Larry Ott’s kitchen, Silas stared at the photograph of his mother. Because they’d lost their things on the trip from Chicago, this was the first picture of her he’d seen in decades, her light skin, hair drawn back in a scarf. The smile she wore was the one she used around white people, not the one he remembered when she was genuinely happy, where every part of her face moved and not just her lips, how her eyes wrinkled, her hairline went back, how you saw every gleaming white tooth, the kind of smile he’d seen fewer and fewer times the older she got. But this plastic smile, the photograph, was better than no picture at all.

His cell buzzed and he jumped.

“You still on for lunch?” Angie asked.

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong, baby? Your voice sounds funny.”

“Nothing,” he said, staring at his mother’s face. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

He closed the phone and, glancing around the kitchen, stuck the picture in his shirt pocket, vaguely aware he was stealing evidence from a crime scene. He stood, covered in sweat, feeling like somebody was watching him. But who would care that he kept one picture? The only ghosts here knew the secrets already.

seven

IT WAS 1982. Larry sat up in bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked out the window where a fence cut across his view of the cornfield and beyond that the line of trees. His life had changed. He got out of bed and dressed quickly and in the bathroom looked at his face in the mirror. He came down the hall with his hair wet and sat and watched as his mother mashed his eggs with a fork the way he liked them and salted and peppered them and set the plate between his fork and paper napkin.

“Thanks.”

“Daddy’s already said the blessing.”

A paper napkin in his uniform collar, his father sat at the head of the table, leaning back with his head turned so he could see the news. When a commercial came on Carl turned his attention back to his plate of eggs, grits, and bacon. He added salt.

“Where’s the mail?” he asked.

Larry hadn’t even thought of it. “I forgot,” he said.

“Larry,” his mother said. “Did you tell Daddy?”

His father paused chewing his bacon but didn’t look at Larry. “Tell Daddy what?”

“Larry’s asked Cindy on a date.”

Now he looked. “I’ll be damn.”

“Carl.”

“Sorry.”

His mother sat beside him and blew into her coffee mug. “Tell us how you asked her.”

“I just done it,” Larry mumbled, though the opposite was true.

The day before, he’d been walking past the Walker place with his rifle, same as a thousand other times. Their car was gone, so he was surprised when Cindy walked out of the house, almost as if she’d been waiting on him. She wore cut-off jeans and a T-shirt and suddenly, as he stood there grateful for the rifle that gave his hands something to do, she was talking to him.

“You like movies?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Movies.”

“You ever go?”

“We seen Star Wars. And Smokey and the Bandit. In Meridian.”

“You ever go to that drive-in theater they got?”

He hadn’t. It was off on a lonely two-lane, twenty minutes toward Hattiesburg, and only showed movies rated R. He remembered Ken and David talking about it on the playground years earlier. Now they went each weekend on double dates with their girlfriends, smuggling in beer, marijuana joints, making out with the girls.

“We could go,” Cindy said.

“We could?”

“Can you get a car?”

If he had to steal one he could. “Yeah.”

And so, standing in the middle of the road, he’d been asked out on a date.

“Friday night?” Cindy had said.

“Friday night,” he’d said.

“I’ll be dern,” said his father.

His mother leaned over and refilled his cup. “Idn’t that something, Carl?”

But the news had come back on and his father was watching again, sipping his coffee.

Larry shot his mother a plaintive glance, and she was up and around the table with her coffeepot, blocking his father’s view and leaning down eye to eye. “He needs to use my car, Carl,” she said. “I told him ask you.”

He’d drawn back from her but his face relaxed in a kind way, like after Larry had cut the grass without being told. “If he asks me his self,” Carl said, “I reckon he can use it.”

His mother leaned back and nodded to Larry.

“Can I?” he asked.

“Can you what?”

“Please borry Momma’s car Friday night for a date with Cindy to the drive-in?” He was immediately sorry he’d given that detail.

“To the what?” his mother said. “I don’t-”

Carl tried not to grin. “That where they show bosoms?”

“Carl-”

“Not always, Daddy.” Larry had begun to blush. “This time it’s a western. About the James gang. Name of it’s The Long Riders.”

Long Riders,” his father said. “What’s it rated?”

Larry looked into his plate. “R.”

“Carl-”

“A Jesse James picture, complete with bosoms.”

“Carl!”

He was almost smiling and humor kindled his eyes. “They had em back then, too, Ina, I’m pretty sure they did. Yeah, boy,” he told Larry, “you can go. Take the Buick. It’s got a bigger backseat.”

“Carl Ott, you stop!”

“Ina the boy’s sixteen ain’t he? Hell,” he said, “I’ll even pay.” He produced his wallet and drew a twenty-dollar bill. He flattened it on the table and slid it over to Larry’s place mat.

He could have slid a thousand-dollar bill and Larry wouldn’t have been more surprised. For a moment he couldn’t imagine what to say.

“Larry?” His mother raised her eyebrows.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now go get the mail.”

HIS FATHER STILL drove him to school, long talkless rides they both endured. Neither had ever mentioned

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