“Don’t the boys always win out?”

“No, ma’am, they don’t. You should see some of them girls. Now Annawake, she’s a killer. And my wife was. That’s how we met, playing ball. I won a point, and then she did, we went on like that for a whole game, so we figured out we’d have to get married.”

Alice laughs. “Seems like a better reason than most kids have.”

“I quit going for a while, after she died. I didn’t tell you, but the other night, when we went over together, that’s the first I been for a while.”

“Why’s that, Cash?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I was gone away, and then after I come back it seemed too hard. It reminded me of the funerals.”

“They have funerals at the stomp grounds?”

“Well, sure. They carry the casket around the fire three times, the same direction as you go when you’re dancing, and then they carry it walking backwards, three times. I guess you’re going back out of life the same door as you come in.

And then you go to the cemetery for the burying. There’s buckets of tea outside the cemetery, so when you go out you can wash your face and hands in the tea to wash off the grieving, and leave it there.”

Cash looks sunk in misery. Alice says gently, “It don’t seem like you left it all behind.”

“Well, maybe they was too much of it come all at once.

Four year ago, we had three funerals in the same season: my mama, well of course she was old. Then my wife, of the cancer. And then my oldest girl, Alma. She drove her car off a bridge and landed it upside down in the Arkansas River.

She had a little bitty girl, when she done that. She left the baby behind that night with her sister, the one that run off with a no-count boy to Tulsa and don’t talk to me no more. I kept on calling her up for a while. She was mean as she could be, but I had to call, because I was worried about Alma’s baby. Lacey, her name was. But durn if one day she didn’t up and give that baby away. She goes to a bar one night and hands her over to some girl passing through in a car.”

Alice feels the breath knocked out of her, exactly as if she had fallen off a roof. She can’t pull in air.

“The younger people have got bad problems, I’ll be the first one to tell you. Monday mornings the jails are full of ’em. A lot of these kids think liquor is made for one purpose, to get drunk as quick as you can.”

“How do you know she gave the baby away?”

“She told me. How do you like that? She tells me, ‘Pop, I’m moving to Ponca City, could I use your truck next weekend? I done give Alma’s baby away.’ I felt so discouraged I just packed up my truck that same weekend and drove out of here. I couldn’t stand to look at my own kin.”

Alice puts a hand on her chest and gets her breath back.

She has to say it before she thinks twice. “Cash, my daughter has that girl.”

Cash puts down his coffee cup and looks at Alice. He doesn’t for an instant disbelieve her.

“That’s what I come here for,” she tells him. “Annawake saw Taylor and the little girl on TV telling the story of how she got adopted. Annawake figured some way she belonged to the Cherokees, and she tracked them down. Taylor run off. They’re living on the lam now so she won’t have to give her up. She loves her, Cash. My daughter’s been as good a mother to that child as ever you’re going to find.”

“Lord God in Heaven,” Cash replies.

“I can’t figure out what to think,” Alice says.

“No, me neither.”

“My brain’s gone off somewhere. Are you fixing to be mad? Because I have to tell you where I stand. My daughter hasn’t done a thing in the world wrong. She’s protecting her child, like any living mother would do, man or beast.”

“No,” Cash says. “She ain’t done wrong. I’m just trying to picture that Lacey’s somewhere all in one piece. Walking, I guess. Lord, what am I saying? Walking, talking, picking up sticks. She’d be six and a half.”

“She’s not a Lacey. Not for love nor money. Her name’s Turtle.”

“Well, what kind of a name is that?”

“What kind of a name is Able Swimmer?” Alice fires back.

“Or Stand Hornbuckle, or, or Flester Dreadfulwater!”

Cash ignores her. “It just don’t seem real,” he says. “After I come back here from Wyoming a little while ago, I talked to them girls down at Child Welfare about trying to find her.

They said they might have a bite on the line, but I didn’t hold for much hope. Lord God in Heaven. Us coming together like this, not even knowing.”