Letty puts a hand on top of her dead husband’s hat and squints at Annawake, frowning, until her face lights with recognition. “Annawake, I swear I wouldn’t have knowed you, except you was here at the hog fry. With that hair all cut off.”

“Well, Letty, I’m growing it back. I’ll look presentable in a year or two.”

“I reckon you will.” Now Letty stares at her pie plate.

“How’d you get hold of that?”

“I took some of your sweet potato pie home from that hog fry you had for Cash. We took it home to Millie, remember?

It’s her favorite.”

“Well, she should have come. She missed a good one.”

“She wanted to, but the baby was cranky from getting his shots.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.”

“He got over it. Millie says thanks for the pie. She wasn’t going to return the plate till she had a chance to catch her breath and cook something to send back in it. But that’s not going to happen for about twelve more years, so I snuck out with it this morning. I figured you’d rather just have the plate.”

Letty laughs. “That’s how it is with kids, all right. They’re all over you like a bad itch. I miss mine, though, now that they’s done growed.”

Annawake looks around for evidence that a person might need a butcher knife to stand out here in the garden. There is no danger she can see. “You look like you’re hunting for another hog to kill.”

“I would, if one run through here, and that’s no lie. Or a ostrich. Did you hear about that ostrich feather Boma Mellowbug’s got hold of?”

“No.”

“She says it fell on her side of the fence. That Green fellow figures she climbed over and got it, and he wants it back.

He says he’ll take her to court over it. Cash saw her downtown yesterday, a-wearin’ it in her hat.”

Annawake is sorry to have missed that. “How’s Cash settling in, anyway?” she asks.

“Oh, I guess he’s all right. I think he broods. I got him fixing up my roof for me to improve his disposition.”

“That must be why I saw him yesterday talking to Abe Charley at the hardware store. You know, he’s got a secret admirer.”

Annawake can see Letty’s ears rise half an inch in her head.

“Who are you thinking of?”

“There’s a woman staying over at Sugar and Roscoe’s place. She’s some kind of relative of Sugar’s.”

“Oh, honey, I know all about that. I was standing right over there in my own kitchen the day the woman called on my telephone and told Sugar she had to come here in a big old hurry. She’s got some secret business with the Nation.

A big claim. I can’t tell you no more about it. I really oughtn’t to go into it even that much.”

Annawake smiles. “Well, she’s dying to meet Cash Stillwater, that’s what I heard.”

“We ought to tell him, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Annawake says. “He’d just be embarrassed, I imagine.”

“Probably. Far be it from me to go butt in. What’s she like, the cousin?”

“Alice Greer is her name. She’s nice-looking, divorced. She despises watching TV, that’s the main thing I know about her. She said she likes a man that will talk to her.”

“Well, goodness me, Cash will talk your ear plumb off. I ought to know that.”

“I gather she’s going to be in town for a while,” Annawake says. “They’ll run into each other one way or another, don’t you think?”

“Oh, sure,” Letty says. Her knife blade catches the sun and winks in Annawake’s eyes. “One way or another.”

Annawake decides not to ask again about the knife. She will drop off the plate and go, leaving Letty to her own devices.

24

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

THE MAN WHO COLLECTS TAYLOR’S rent has pulled up in front of their apartment, just as she was about to leave to walk Turtle to school. His truck is loaded with strange things: large, long-handled nets, for example, and shipping crates.

He gets out of the truck and steps snappily up the walk before Taylor can pretend she didn’t see him.

“Hi,” she says. “I was going to put it in the mail tomorrow.”

“Well, they wanted me to get it from you today, if you don’t mind. Since it’s a week past due.”

“Okay. Let me go in and get my checkbook.”

The manager, a young man whose name she doesn’t know, wears broad, flat-paned glasses that reflect the light, giving him a glassy-fronted appearance, like a storefront. Taylor actually feels a little sorry for him: what a hateful job. He once told her, apologetically, that his real job is in City Park Maintenance; he had to take on managing the apartments for extra cash after his wife had a baby. He has pale, uncommanding fuzz on his cheeks and seems too young to have all these worries.