She took the bowl and put it under soapy water in the sink for washing. Her eyes gazed at the lake through the window, but she was seeing things far away in time and location. “Get those blessed beans two feet down in your soul, child, and you won’t go far wrong in life!” her mawmaw had told her. Could she say that to Master Homer? Would he listen to that? she wondered. He wasn’t much for standing around listening, not at his age, she considered. Poor boy! No proper mother! No proper father! What Homer made of the situation at his grandmother’s, she couldn’t tell since he didn’t talk about it. It made no Irish sense to her either. But--

Scrubbing at the sink, she had the dishes done in a moment and rinsed and put in the dish rack for drying with a towel.

She paused, however, to turn to the door where he must have gone out, leaving it partly ajar like he usually did. She was thinking, not the first time, that the boy needed an explanation sooner or later, and better sooner. He would be growing up before long, and then it might run bad for the Missus if he then found out things best told him while he could be still be managed like a child. That was her best view of the matter. But who asked a cook’s opinion, particularly an Irish one’s? Leastwise, Missus Bean, a proud lady who knew her place and standing as a Sognstad were a hundred times as good as a hired servant’s anyday. No doubt she’d look small in her eyes if she turned to “ignorant country Irish folk” for advice on how to manage her grandson’s affairs!

Shaking her head, Higgins glanced once toward the ceiling, above which she heard footfalls crossing to the window, probably the Missus trying to see what society on the barge might be dancing tonight. Having been a party-loving debutante in Louisia in her younger days, she couldn’t help looking now, Higgins reflected. Who could blame the old lady? Coming down out of Dixie’s upper crust to live in a little, dirty, smelly place like Makon was quite a step for the belle of Baton Roo, which no doubt she once was in her day. So why did she up and leave the bright lights and fancy balls and paved streets and statues and foutains and cafes and grand opree houses for living in the back stretches of Georgia, where even the capital, Alantah, was filled with more hen coops than houses and more farmers’ horse rigs than cars?

Shaking her head, Higgins listened, and the feet in the expensive Baton Roo shoes stayed at the window for a few moments, then retraced their path to the chair by the reading lamp where Missus Bean did all her finest stitchery.

“No doubt pushin’ twenty twice and not one suitor up to snuff!” That had to be it, Higgins reasoned. Miss Selena Sognstad knew she would never find a mate with temperate habits in Baton Roo, where the drinkin’ was so heavy that she’d be forced to marry some drunkard like the other girls and then watch her husband run after other women and do the fancy saloons night after night. No, that wasn’t for her! She had too high an opinion of her blue blood line! Minnepaulian explorers and captains on the rivers from way back, setting up various river principalities in old Dixie or serving as commanders under various would-be “Kings of Dixie,” finally rising to high positions as envoys and ambassadors after the C.S.A. took over the whole East Bear and Turtle country! Her people had been mostly “genteel,”--not lowly farmers or tradesmen but soldiers-of-fortune, city builders, rulers--indeed, , never fallin’ into poor farmin’ and fishin’ and trappin’ for a living like so many other folk. So, once the bloom was off, winter had come and yellowed the leaves. Cutting her losses, she retired to the country with her plain-faced sister Filora and the youngest--who was perhaps too pretty for the size of her wits--looking for dignity rather than the daily disgrace of going about in society an aging beauty with no more chances of marrying--surely a fate worse than backcountry living! It was her luck to find the man who became Judge Bean--a man of wealth and influence, whom every girl in Baton Roo would have fought each other in the public street to get. Was Miss Selena as smart as all that? She knew just where to look, or where her path would cross his? Evidently!

Having figured out her employer, Higgins sighed and turned back to her chores, cooking, washing up, wiping and dusting the beautiful things all over the house--dusting alone was something she had to do everyday to keep things looking the way Missus Bean expected. With a sigh or two as she feathered the Judge’s marble bust and then did several especially renowned Baton Roo sea-kings, she thought how she had her own lost chances too--this man and that. But none would hang around long enough to count. They all turned out to be a flash in the pan. Nothing but a flash in the pan. And now she was too old to marry decently. But at least she had a good job, she thought after a moment. She had Missus Bean and the boy to care for. That was enough! It was work, but she couldn’t claim it was awful hard work, like her mawmaw had done all her days. Living out in the sticks, doing wash for folks in town when she could make the trip, then lugging it back in a big barrow she pushed herself! Plowing the garden without a mule. No wonder she died a young woman, not even reachin’ twoscore.

Higgins paused, taking a glance out the tall glass doors opening on the terrace, with its Baton Roo courtyard and tall marble fountain with the statute of some Baton Roo sea-divinity, half-woman, half-fish. The gardener, she saw, had heaped up the fallen leaves in piles, and was taking them out the back gate with his glacier-cherry red wheelbarrow even now as the rain fell on him.

The sight made Higgins shiver. She remembered how nice it was in the house--as fine a place as Georgia could boast. With renewed vigor, she made her feather duster fly across the gold-embossed ranks of the books in the library. She was doing such a good job, several of the books lost their crumbling luster.

Just then the Missus Bean, glancing in, looked sharply, went to where Higgins had just dusted, rubbed her finger on a book, and frowned.

“These old commentaries are falling apart!” she commented. “I must get someone in here right off to work on them, or they’ll fall apart any day now on these shelves. It’s this wretched country damp! You can’t have fine things here like these and expect them to last more than a few years!”

“Yes, Ma’am!” agreed the cook-housekeeper as she continued dusting. “That damp’l get you ev’ry time! It’s in my knees already, at my age! No man would take me now, in my condition!”

Selena looked her cook over, and shook her head. “Well, that’s nothing to mourn over. Now were did I put that woman’s name?”

“What woman’s?” Higgins wanted to know, though it wasn’t her place.

Missus Bean went to a secretary and sat down. She pulled out first one drawer, then another, and then found an address book. “Ah! This is the one.”

She copied out the address on an envelope, wrote a note, then sealed the envelope and handed it to her cook. “See that this goes on the next White Angel, which can probably take her as a fare if she doesn’t come by private car. I want this woman to come and restore these books. My friends all swore by her, and it is high time I did something about the Judge’s collections. It’s my duty to keep them up as he would have wanted.”

Her time to sigh, she stood slowly, gazing up with faded but still impressive eyes at the Judge’s formal portrait, showing him in his stern, black magisterial robes of office, while at his feet several savage Indian chieftains, their buck naked white skins decorated with beads and feathers, knelt, hands outstretched, at his feet.

Finishing the day out at the counter of Bean’s, without another piece of business after the deliveryman, the old man heard the grandfather clock toll the hour, and he put away the ledgers and a few papers in his office, then watched the two day clerks sweep up, and only then turned off the lights when they left, looking around for any stray customer out of old habit though he couldn’t have seen one two feet away.

Out on the public street he felt just as assured of his location in the Universe as he did anywhere in the store. To the left was the unpainted, disreputable Funky Dawg Tavern, popular hang-out of muskrat, ferret, and beaver trappers and loggers and such “funky trade” who favored plenty of the local brew and a former logging camp belly dancer who could perform on the bar counter while the jukebox shook out song after song of lost love accompanied by recorders and bagpipes.

If bumping and grinding and the music didn’t satisfy, for anyone wanting a jolly fight and maybe later an exchange of buckshot from behind trees on the way home, it was the place to go. How many times it had been closed down nobody could say, but when the smoke cleared it always somehow got up, changed its name slightly from Funky Dawg to Dawg House or Hound Heaven or some such, and got running again just like before. Tape, nails, wire, a slap or two of paint, whatever was on hand was used to fix the honky tonk and open it for business as usual.

Further on, beyond the big, pillared, and marble-fronted brick Palace of Multan Building Judge Bean had built and that Bean’s Trading Post, Makon’s business district could claim a barbershop, sheriff, bank, and an occasional salesman with amazing bargains in Baton Roo fashions no longer seen there but the latest thing in the country. Next, a watering hole for higher grade citizens, Lame Horse Tavern with a blinking red neon sign out front, the rearing stallion holding up its unlighted hoof--followed by a couple abandoned shops and rooming houses, ending the block with the St. Michaelmas Hotel and its cigar store White Indian standing sentry in the ornate green-tiled entrance, the stalagtite decorations and sacred Kuffik-inscriptions (Mustapha, the Ku, or Court Calligrapher, of the Grand Porte when it was located at the military strong-hold of Al -Fik on the southern marches of Kolumbia) extolling the Shaliim the only surviving sign the hotel had once been Makon’s Orthodox church.

Locking up Bean’s main entrance while leaving the door to the mail boxes unlocked, he went a few steps toward Lame Horse, but the camaraderie and hard liquor and other brews inside weren’t appealing at his age, then turned to a stairway that took him up above the store where he had his quarters, fitted out from what had been the Dixieland Ballroom.

Besides, after she had made every effort to reform the hard-drinking Judge and failed, Missus Bean wouldn’t have tolerated any manager of hers drinking. A straight-living woman she always was, president many times of the local ladies’ anti-saloon club (which had fought and won many hard battles to keep out additional saloons), charity quilting club, and the most exclusive sisterhod of the altar guild.

So, aside from being the town’s chief businesswoman, she held claim of being with her sister the cream of the town’s church-supporting gentility, who saw themselves as upholding the standards of civilized townlife in what was fast becoming, again, a howling wilderness with real wolves. Not that the old Minnepaulian pirate’s cove and town on the inland fresh-water sea of Rainy Lake, with the vast forest and swampland of the Ogeechee, Oconee, Ocmulgee, Satilla, and Okefenokee rivers at back, hadn’t seen much better times.

The Palace Building, for instance, had been a showplace in its time, since Judge Bean had brought his taste for big city architecture from having lived in fancy places like Kingston and Baton Roo before moving to the country for his health in his sunset years, taking a a lifetime appointment as county judge for a little something to do. Weary of the bachelor life and a long succession of poor cooks and housekeepers, he had married an aging Sognstad belle with a reputation for setting a fine table when he was approaching sixty and his bride was a still attractive forty, but of course aged beyond hope of marrying so well until he came along since no one else had the social standing to win her hand. Even Alantah and Baton Roo could not claim anything much finer than the Palace, which saw such grand events as the marrying of the Judge and Miss Selena Sognstad, but now all the glory was gone, including the Palace’s monied clientele that kept up party after party going while the boom from logging and mining lasted.

Suddenly, bust hit the town! Big Kal’s main mine had done well in the beginning, following veins of lead and silver and something he called “orichalc,” a strange element only he valued that some shooting star or other had brought to earth, splattering it here and there randomly. No one thought it was worth a dang thing but him--but they dug it for him anyway, as they were paid to do it, same as with payin' dirt of other recognized ores. With the payroll from forty local men he employed round the clock in the mine, added to the drovers and cowboys he needed for the ranch, Kal had brought more than his share of money to the town economy. Yet, solid as it seemed, he closed both the ranch and ranch down without warning. He boarded up everything and left town. The timber company -also sent its workers home and located south. It was the death blow for Makon and all the struggling townships round about, with only a few small sawmills left and trappers and fishing left to sustain the inhabitants. Well, that was ten years ago! Despite the chicken hatchery setting up business and making a little money for Makon, it might have been a hundred, from the looks of the town and all the empty, weed-filled lots from pulled-down and carted-off buildings.

Just the same, a touch or two of better times lingered. Some of the old crystal and gilt and velvet-trimmed ballroom’s Baton-Roo-esque furnishings, what wasn’t removed to furnish the barge on the lake, were left in place when his rooms were put in, which left a fancy chandelier and gilded wall lamp fixtures. Working for Bean’s as long as he had, he enjoyed a nice flowered carpet and handy little kitchen of his own too, but had given up cooking at his age, since he was forgetting to turn off appliances. The wood stove was all he wanted to tend, at any rate, and he was snug enough with that. Also, Mrs. Bean always sent him dinner from Makon Cafe across the street and halfway down the block that her hard-working spinster sister, Miss Filora Sognstad, owned and managed for many a year though she might have lived with her sister and had servants wait on her. That and a pastry or two, plus store coffee, was all he required to keep life stirring his bones.

Going to his chair, he sank down gratefully, then dozed in the gloom until the light suddenly flicked on. He didn’t see the light, of course, being so blind, but he could hear things well enough, and Homer Bean’s boots made a terrific thumping on the stairs even before he bounded into the old man’s apartment with his dinner.

“Dinner time, Gramps!” Homer had to shout, though “Gramps” always knew who and what was coming.

It wasn’t his ears that were failing so much, nor even his eyes--his heart was bothering him more and more these days. Taking care not to show the pain that came with shortness of breath, he turned to the boy. Suddenly, as he reached for the tray he felt an acute stab in his chest. It made him think twice. Should he? Or shouldn’t he? Was now the time? Maybe there wouldn’t be another time to get it out clean and square to the boy, since it was clear his “granny” hadn’t done right by him as yet.

“Now don’t run off while I eat this!” he admonished the boy. “I got something to tell you your ears need to hear, I reckon!”

His patience having been put to the test already once that day by adults, Homer sighed, then sank down on the sofa with its back to the window with its view of run-down, abandoned buildings.

Instead, startling the boy, he reached for him. "Lemme touch you face, boy. I gotta see who I am telling this impertant bit of chronologgy to!"

"What do you mean?" Homer protested. "I let nobody feel my face!"

"Aw, come now boy, don't you knows anything--how else can I sees ya in my state!"

Suddenly, the boy understood he was hurting the old man, and, sighing, he submitted.

The old man's hands, rough and grizzled, were surprisingly gentle, as he ran his fingers over the boy's forehead, nose, and cheeks, stopping at his chin."

The old man sat back. "Okay! NOW I kin sees ya fine in my mind, boy. Shall we proseeds?"

With that little preface, the old manager began with Homer’s being an orphan. Yes, Homer knew he was an orphan, but his grandmother was almost the same as a mother,with Minny Higgins to help some too. Kids still made comments, it is true, but it had been the situation with him all his life, and it was scarcely ever brought up in his hearing anymore, that he had no father or mother that anyone could point to. “Spose you wondered ‘bout that, eh?” the old man prodded him. “If you ain’t wondered, then high time you did! Well, let’s go back to the beginning. That’s the place--the place we best begin.”

The old man shifted to the end of the sofa and turned so his sightless eyes now faced the window and looked out on the town, or what it had been before the Bust. It had been a busy place then, not at all like Homer knew it. How changed! How changed! He could see it so clearly too--not like the dimming, dark world he now faced day after day!

“Now as I was sayin’... Kal was real tall even with his boots off. Had to stoop under every doorway in Makon City, not to mention had to duck under all those trees he growed on his own territory, stretchin least one hunnerd and thirty-two mile, far as Korinthy, that is, far as he ever gone huntin’ quail, deer, or anything trespassin on his spread. Came here out of nowhere, then set up as a bigtime rancher with a logging and mining operation and done real well. He was the talk of town, you bet, what with his light-colored hair and all the money he was making off this country and everybody working for him ‘cept money people like the old Judge who could afford to plow his own furrow. As I was sayin’ he wasn’t quality folk maybe but he acted like he was higher than the stars to even the Judge, who liked or hated a man the first time he looked him in the eye, and when he eyed Kal must seen something close to a polecat he didn’t like from the start, for he wouldn’t shake hands and Kal was proud and wasn’t goin’ to press him for it either! So, that being the case betwixt ‘em, we didn’t see much of him, since the Judge didn’t like seeing him in town and made a noise that he’d slap a restraining order on Kal’s operation and fine him or something for something he might not be doing legal. If ever he did come into town for a drink, he’d go to the Funky Dawg, never Lame Horse where’d they wouldn’t serve him, no matter how much money he had wadded up in his hand! I know! Why, Homer boy, as I was saying, there’s nothing then and nothing much important now that I can’t see. Why, that screen door they got for the restaurant don’t keep out a fly--busted like it is. Don’t know why Miss Filora who’s got plenty money don’t fix it all these years. Don’t get me wrong. Miss Filora’s grub and her smorgasbord every month is fixed well enough. It’s good of her and Missus Bean too to have it sent up to me like this by you, boy.

“Listen, I was telling you about Kal, right? Of course he weren’t called ‘Kal’ to his face. He was too high-ridin’ for a little nick-name like that, lookin down on all us hoomanity like he was some kind of king of the mountain. That name of his was more like “Kalvert” or “Kalwallader,” something citified like that you can’t pronounce unless you have more teeth than I have got to my name. Listen, as I said he didn’t show in town much ‘cuz of the Judge and most folks resentin his making so much money offa them and his havin Indian-colored hair and all. And with that hunting cap he always wore in and out of deer season, well, and that feather too, he sorta took the eye, maybe in the wrong way. Like some kind of Gypsy, really. But no one ‘cept the Judge dared say about it to his face, naturally, since Kal was a tall man, toted a rifle, and was something of a boxer and could knock anyone he didn’t like the other side of town.

“Now where was I? It was, yes, a day I remember, last day he was ever in town, in fact. He had something gone wrong with his digestion and poisoned him, from eating our greasey country food so long, he let out, and Doc Marshall had him for a spell, and then when he felt better he let himself out without asking the doc know and walked into town, just like he owned the place, I might say. It was good the Judge was gone to Korinthee or Spartah on some kind of real estate business, for he was always buyin’ this property and that and sellin’ out to buy something better, just to spend the time, I expect, since he had his fortune an’ could just sit on it if he liked and still get richer.

“Well, Kal was walking right down Main Street. He was in a fightin’ attitude, I could tell. Someone had poached a number head of his prize cows, I heard later--which, funny thing, he didn’t ever milk ‘em for the milk,, but always threw that away like rubbish, saying they mighta et some poison weed that grewed everywhere round on his spread, though I done never seen any such weed in these parts. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Well, he had started to go toward the Lame Horse, then paused, changing his mind since he didn’t see the Judge’s car out front. Then he felt a little faint because he leaned against the Palace. Then he must have felt better, and he went in the Dawg House. Later, he came out, feeling even better, I suspect. He looked for the Judge’s car. Still no Judge! He staggered on, and I saw him go round the block. Now I can see around this whole block like the owl up in the tree can see the whole dang country! And so I know, dark as it was getting, that he was up to no good, that Kal. I don’t know why he thought her pretty, but she was in a way, I guess. But here she comes steppin’ fancy down the backstairs, Selena’s and Filora’s younger sis Agatha--everyone called her Aggie--in a pink, fizzed up, ruffled sort of thing girls wore to parties back then. She wasn’t much to speak of in the upper storey, that poor girl, though a real looker. Down the stairs she came, all pink soda fizz, and round toward her came Kal the best he could in his delicate condition.

"Thar was ne’er enough light back behind the Palace. I don’t know why Aggie came down those stairs, mighty slippery when it was wet. But there she came, and...well, boy, they took a liking to each other all of a sudden. Grown-ups can do that, you know, and that girl became your mother mighty quick--maybe a tad too quick for most people in the town. So that’s who your real ma is--” He paused. “Are you listening good, son?”

Nails Jensen’s eyes were so fixed on the past he couldn’t possibly see the expression of bewilderment on the boy’s face when he turned his head to him. Satisfied even without seeing, though Homer’s face was showing acute distress, the old man turned back to his reminiscing.

“Well, things went pretty fast in after that. Next thing I heard was Kal’s whole enterprise closed up for good, the Judge after his tail like a hound dawg on a coon, and Kallaway or Kalvert or Kallwallader, whatever he was, took off for parts unknown, leaving the poor girl, who must have let out what happened to her behind the Palace. It was hush-hush from then on, let me tell you! But I know they put her way off someplace in an institution, for ‘bout a year later the Judge and Missus came from a trip out of town with a nurse and a two-pint whelp they let out was an orphan they saw down in Baton Roo and just couldn’t let starve in starve in the streets outside their hotel, so they adopted it--that is, you. They made you a proper Bean, and there was considerable talk, of course, but him being Judge there was nothing said in the paper we still had back then. As for po’ Miss Aggie, she was just blown away like a leaf, and Missus Bean let us all know that she was too gone in the head to ever return to proper Makon society. What could we say to that? We knew that just by looking at the po’ , sweet thing . Well, not long after they came back with you, boy, the Judge kicked off, crashed down at the seacoast in that plane of his, authorities said, and left the Missus with rearing you. You know the rest! I jist told you how it came to be, an’ you have a right to know it. Now what does you think about it? It’s some sorry business, ain’t it? Real sorry!”

He turned again, but Homer had fled away so quietly that even Nails Jensen was impressed.

But he wasn’t sorry. It just might cost him his job when Missus Bean found out how much he told the boy. But he had his retirement saved up, and he could always go to live as far as he could get, Korinthy on the end of the mail line. No he wasn’t sorry even at the thought of being turned out of comfortable situation for him. Somebody had to tell the boy. Somebody! He felt he owed it to the boy, who had brought him his meals and done many an errand for him, and yet was facing life with no real claim to anything despite his boarding in a fancy house with a so-called granny. What could be more sorry business than that? Unless there was some truth to the rumor about Kal--just a rumor it was--

Presently, he heard familiar boots on the stairs, only they were dragging.

The door was pushed open. “Sorry, Mr. Jensen, I had to go see Grandma. I really wasn’t running off. Now can I go home? It’s dinner time. And I got to study some for school tomorrow.”

“Shure, shure, I unnerstand,” grunted the achingly lonely man, knowing that Missus Bean always had dinner set promptly at 8:00, a full two hours before most everyone in town had read the latest back issue of the Alantah Times, et and gone to bed."

The old man shifted on the sofa, turning his face up to where he seemed to think his listener was hovering above him.

“Now did I tell you who your mother is and how it came to be? I--I think I did. Now turn off the light and save Missus Bean the cost of the juice. I can see right tolerable without it shinin’ in my eyes. I can still count the stars, let me tell you, and how many constellations there be, and give you the names too! By saintgeorge, I ain’t blind! Nosir! I see plenty more than folks think I can at my age. Why, there be shinin’ that Fat Man, ain’t he? Got his big lunch basket out too. Ha! I’m right, ain’t I? And over there to the side of ‘im is the black Coal Sack, and, yes, I do believe I see tonight the Reaper’s Scythe gleamin’ just over the horryzon, so sainted Blasius and his first Big Blow and freezin’ of the lake can’t be too long comin’--”

Homer groaned, then obeyed and started for his usual clothes in his closet. "No, you don't!" Higgins said, holding out a robe. "Don't you know what day this is? You wear your best for Second Pillar of Wisdom graduation! But first I got to whiten your hair real good with bleached corn flour!"

Homer groaned even louder. How he hated the required costume and especially the "see-through" cap that was supposed to show whether he was a sinner or not, which he only wore to church school graduations or to special occasions on holy days. Since dark hair was visible under the cap, it had to be made white, any way a person could do it--or the boy was not allowed in the ceremonies! Black hair was a sign of sin and impurity--all because of that cap Homer hated so much, understandably.

As she put the finishing touches on his hair and outfit, Homer could hardly keep from showing her how much he hated the whole thing of dressing up and coloring his hair. But what could he do against these grownups who ruled over him and even decided what he had to wear each day? He couldn't have felt more frustrated and outraged. As long as people could do this to him, he felt like he was their slave, even worse off than a White Indian living on berries and possum in the wilderness!

How he would have loved to change places with any White savage at that moment! He certainly looked like one at the mment! But of course, that was impossible. He'd be spotted in a moment as an outsider the moment they saw his skin color! No, there was no use running away. Nobody in the woods would accept him as one of them, and here at home, with the likes of Higgins manhandling him as she liked...he could hardly keep back the tears.