He wasn’t sure why he stopped himself and maybe he was making a mistake. It was right, when something said go, for you to go. He believed this, or thought he did. He wasn’t sure. Something about the letter, about what had happened in the last two days — he’d come on another sense of things. Small but particular, not a dominion, but an understanding. He couldn’t tell what it was but he knew he wasn’t going to make a sprint for the train. He waved again, a larger wave this time, and made a sign of good luck to the nomads settling into the open doors of the cars. In the west the sky was blue and streaked with long fish-tailed clouds.
As he walked back into town he felt a twice-settled weight in him, the dashed freshness of missing the train and the heavier bundle of this new loss. But it wasn’t a loss, the second one, this woman or girl who had driven away in the gray sweet-smelling morning in her own car. She wanted him to write her. He wanted to get back to his museum job and regular place in the world and now he did that.
The professor was glad to see him. He put him to wiping with a dry rag the glassine folders they stored the extra photos in. Delvin was happy to do this. He finished and then went out back to the little table and wrote a letter that he walked down to the post office and mailed. In it he told her how happy he was to meet her. He told her he would carry her with him everywhere and neither of them could help it one way or the other, that they were in each other’s life now and don’t worry he welcomed her into his.
He wanted them to put the letter on its way immediately and thought of carrying it himself part of the way. Her home was in the extreme western part of the state, other side from the way the professor said they were headed. They were on their way through the eastern towns and north then to Tennessee and on the professor said to Roanoke where he had people he liked to spend a couple of weeks with in the hottest part of the summer. Delvin was planning to get off in Chattanooga.
Back at the van he sat in the shade under the little orange awning writing another letter. Later a few boys came by, paid their nickels and he took them through the exhibits. They liked the pictures of baseball players. He didn’t show them the murder photographs and it was because he didn’t want them to feel bad. He didn’t want to be part of anybody feeling bad just now. One of the boys said the little painted reed baskets looked like Indian ware. Well, Delvin said, there was cross-marrying among Indian and colored folk, that was a fact. Another boy said he had Indian blood. The others began to joke at him and they made their way out of the van laughing. Delvin stayed inside. He needed to study the photos a while. This was something he did regularly. After supper he sat at the little fold-up table inside the van and studied photographs by the light of the coal oil lamp. The professor was off trying to get a donation from one of the churches. This was one of many such nights.
The next day they were on the road, headed for Cary. Then on to Dumont and then to Cromville. They drove past the long finger lake, Rommy Run. Inland gulls, white and gray, their sickle wings catching the late afternoon light, wheeled over the dark green waters of a little cove. They made it to Depburg by dark.
