“Well, it surely is hot,” he said, a look on his face that made the woman who cooked for the family think she’d hardly seen a person look so catercornered to hisself. She wanted to laugh at him, but as the laugh rose in her it changed to pity.
“She left a letter for you,” she said, this woman about whom he was wondering if she could tell him what he was supposed to do now—
“A letter?”
“It’s right here on the speckle table,” she said as if he was inside the house, but she hadn’t let him in, and she turned, went away and got it and brought it to him.
He accepted the letter like a starving man told the banquet was not for him but he could have this chunk of cold cornbread here. Those riches! But still, here was food.
Like a dog, he thought as he went down the steps with the letter clasped against his chest, I scurry off to eat my little mess of leftovers in secret.
But he was not bitter, not yet, or ever would be really. Even later, out in the rain-drenched cotton fields of the state prison system as he trudged barefoot along the rows chopping nutgrass with a hoe, he would not cast blame on her.
He kept the unopened letter in his breast pocket safe like a tiny coiled lifeline until after dinner, that he ate alone behind the van under the little detachable awning at the small round folding table they used for meals and sometimes card games on cool nights when the mosquitoes weren’t too vicious. When an older woman carrying a blue cloth parasol with a wide chuffed rim approached, asking to look at the exhibits, he got up, let her in and showed her around. When he stepped out to finish his ham sandwich, she stole half a dozen photos, a fact he only became aware of after the professor got back and discovered it.
The professor was in a foul mood over his teeth. The fretwork hurt and had cost him more than it should have and on top of that among the purloined snaps were two of his favorites. He swore and ordered Delvin out of the van and off the property.
“You firing me?” He was stricken and angry himself.
“Just go on,” the prof said, sitting down in the chair Delvin had vacated. “Leave me be.” The old man felt like closing the museum and driving off someplace by himself to grieve his wounded teeth and the loss of the photos (grieve the founderings of time, the raw blast that had wakened him that morning with thoughts of his own demise, grieve the single-minded woman he’d left back in Biloxi years ago, a woman with shiny hair and a quickness of spirit that sat him up straight in his chair). For the moment he felt as if he could not go on. The boy — damn the boy.
Delvin walked fast away from the van. He had been about to read the letter when the professor appeared. He walked until he was out of town and then crossed the gully and entered the hobo camp. It was mostly deserted this time of day, but a few men were lying under a large persimmon tree smoking and talking. He didn’t want any company, he only wanted to feel less peeled. He was so nervous his hands shook. He walked through the camp and into a field of broomsedge, made a little clearing for himself and sat down in the grass. A ways farther on a little willow stood up from the field, its branches cut partially back and heavy with leaves. He got up and went over there and sat down in the shade of the tree. A killdeer fluttered up and made her little flopping display trying to draw trouble away from her chicks, but he didn’t pay any attention.
The letter was brief.
