But mostly the street was empty of people he knew. The big round-fendered cars were shiny from the rain earlier in the day. He had lain on the narrow floral-smelling bed in Mrs. Cutler’s house listening to the light, hesitant rain peck at the tin roof, half counting the drops, half coming to know each one, half marking where each hit, which pile of dobber dust, which leaf or cheek, which shingle or board laid aside and forgotten. Forgotten! That was the conjur. That was the evil word. In each place, each comfy corner, each sideboard with its special teapot or trencher, its little carved doodad brought back from campground, he was forgotten; every porch had grown used to his absence, each room and kettle and heart. He had passed, still living, into the realm of ghosts. It was enough to take the heart out of a man. But oddly — and this was odd to him — he felt not an emptiness but a gathering, a sweetness and an openness that he had not expected. He wanted to run forth like a child, singing some snappy song.
He cut along the alley behind Suber’s Hardware, headed toward the Emporium, walking fast under the big skinned sycamores, on his way to someplace with a name. But then for no reason he stopped at the little auto repair garage Jimmy Dandes operated behind his house and stood in shadow under a monkeypaw tree listening to a couple boys playing guitars. He had stopped in this place when he was a child to listen to these boys’ father play ragtime tunes on his banjo. The two boys, twins, he remembered, looked nothing like each other and their playing too strained against harmony. They stood in the alley on each side of a small fire that as far as Delvin could tell had no reason for being except maybe somebody just liked little fires.
Then a young woman in a light, flower-colored dress covered with a white apron came out of the house carrying a big platter of fresh fish. The men quit playing and began to help her. One of them set a four-legged wire grill over the fire, laid a skillet on top and filled the skillet with lard from a tin bucket. The lard crackled and spit and the men stood looking at the fire. One of the boys ran to the house and came back carrying a small table and some plates and a sack of cornmeal. He looked across the alley and saw Delvin standing under the droopy-leafed tree.
“Do we know you?” he said in a friendly way. He was the brother with the lopsided face.
“I’m not sure,” Delvin said, taking a step forward. “I hadn’t been around here for a while.”
“Didn’t you use to work over to the Riverlight cotton warehouse?” the other said.
“No, that wadn’t me.”
“You play ball for the Negro Pioneers?” the first asked. His name, Delvin remembered, was Harley.
“No, I never played ball.”
“You from Chattanooga?” the other with the round face said. Delvin couldn’t remember his name.
“Born and raised.”
The woman was dredging the fish (they looked like bream) in cornmeal and laying them aside on the table. The closer boy — young man — the one whose face seemed to slant too far down on one side, asked if he would like to join them for dinner. Delvin without thinking said he would be happy to.
He helped them fry the fish and then he carried the platter of crackly, steaming bream back into the yard where the young woman directed him to put it down on a long trestle table that had a dark cloth laid on it. Lanterns were lit, citronella lamps set out on two chairs and then, helped by a couple of young girls, an older couple came out — Delvin recognized the father, now grown grizzled, with thin sunken cheeks — and took places in fat armchairs at either end of the table set up under a maple that was still, so he could see in the light, mostly green.
The boys explained to their father that Delvin was raised in Chattanooga and had just returned from several years away. The old man asked who his folks were and Delvin said he had found that they had passed on years ago.
“They would be who now?” the old woman, a sharp-eyed person with puffy cheeks and a light cloud of almost pure white hair, asked.
“Walker,” Delvin said.
“I don’t believe I recollect them,” the old man said. “They live over this way?”
“Long time ago,” Delvin said, “but they moved out toward Shipley Station, died out there.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear they’ve passed,” the old woman said, eyeing him rigorously.
Delvin thanked her. The first bite of fish had burned the roof of his mouth, a problem with hot food he had picked up on the prison circuit. He juggled the fish flesh with his tongue until it was cool and swallowed it down. One of the girls over by her mother giggled and mimicked him. He laughed.
“What sort of work you do?” the old man asked in a friendly way.
“I’m writing on a book,” Delvin said. He took a long pull of tea. It was cooled with chunks of ice hacked off a block. He picked out a piece and pressed it to his lips.
“Burn yoself?” the old man said.
“No sir, I just like ice.”
