The ride home from the lake was unusually quiet. He peered in the rearview mirror to see if his talkative grandson, strapped into the seat behind him, had fallen asleep. The boy looked out the window, and then down into his lap. There he held the small bluegill, wrapped in foil, his first catch. A moment of triumph in the life of a six-year-old, perhaps second only to removing the training wheels, at last.

“Everything all right?”

The boy nodded his head, then turned his gaze out the window to view the passing landscape.

“Sure?” He flicked his eyes from the road to the mirror.

“Papa?”

“Yes?”

“The joy of fishing just doesn’t last.” The boy’s shrugged shoulders and splayed, uplifted palms expressed the disquiet reflected in his voice.

He nodded and smiled into the mirror.

“I guess that’s why we will have to go back again.”

“When?”

The shrug of his shoulders, the pursed lips, and raised eyebrows as he lights his cigarette speak for Thomas Grady like an expletive.

He slouches in his desk chair, reaching into his back pocket to remove his wallet, easing the effort by rolling onto his right side. With a flip of his wrist, the wallet skids across the desk. It flops open against a pile of unfiled reports, displaying the gold shield marked Special Agent.

Settling back in his chair, Tommy draws on his cigarette, then snatches it between practiced fingers from his lips. His eyes close for a moment, as he sighs the smoke into the stale air above his desk.

“What a bunch of boobs. Bee-oh-oh-ooobs.” He shakes his head and laughs a dry, sardonic cackle. “In all my twenty-three years as a cop, I never seen anything like these guys.”

The cigarette in his right hand streaks the air, trailing smoke like a skywriter in a broad, inclusive arc.

“You know the ship we seized for smuggling — the Gloria Celeste? Well, I just paid a little visit to her down at the Boston Fuel Pier, where those mindless wondahs from Customs are supposed to be guarding the evidence. I walked right up the gangway and boarded the ship. Nobody in sight. Nobody challenged me. Nothin’.”

His hand cleaves the air with a definitive slash. The ash falls in a trajectory from his cigarette to the carpet, tumbling as it disintegrates into fine flakes.

“So, I walked around, checking things out, and you wouldn’t believe what I found. I looked down into the main hold through the cargo hatch, which was open. Guess what I see. You won’t believe this.”

His listener shrugs.

“Tiny marijuana plants.” Tommy peeks through a crevice between his thumb and forefinger. “Coming up through the cracks in the deck planking — about ankle high.” He throws back his head, laughing in a loud staccato. “Perfect little plants. You couldn’t grow them any better in a greenhouse.” He cackles again, plucking a shred of tobacco from his tongue.”That ship is supposed to be United States property now. But it’s a ganja farm. Bee-autiful. What a bunch of boobs. And they call themselves federal agents.”

Rising from his chair with a groan, he shuffles the stack of phone messages on his desk, and stuffs them into the corner of the desk blotter.

“Now that’s irony, ain’t it? Yeah, I know irony when I see it. I went to college too, ya know. Right about the time you were learning how to write your last name.”

He glances over his shoulder, placing the cigarette between his lips, where it bobbles as he talks. A wadded paper missile grazes the top of his head, and he ducks, cackling again.

“Nice shot, college boy.”

The smoke swirls around his head as he saunters over to the door. His corduroy sports jacket hangs on a hook behind the door. He retrieves a crumpled soft-pack of Salems from the inside pocket, and shakes one loose. He lights the cigarette on the butt of the last one, then returns to his desk and snuffs out the butt in the ashtray. His finger probes the pack.

“I’d quit this habit, but then I’d have to call myself a quittah, and that would never do.” Picking up the ashtray from his desk, he transfers it with the pack of cigarettes to the shared computer desk, two strides across the cramped office.

“Gotta type a report to the U.S. Attorney about his new marijuana farm. He might be able to use the plants as additional evidence. Not to mention that it’ll embarrass the hell out of Customs. Oh, well. All in a day’s work.”

He sidles up to the computer desk and pulls out the chair.

“This thing workin’?” He drops into the chair and grunts a puff of smoke. From the breast pocket of his shirt, he produces a pair of reading glasses, placing them low on the bridge of his nose. Peering over the glasses, he laughs and shrugs his shoulders.

“Doctah’s ordahs.”

Tommy turns to his work, tapping the keyboard before him with all the zeal of a concert pianist playing a favorite sonata.

A ride in his grandfather’s car always proved to be an adventure. He never knew quite where they might end up. Maybe just an errand. Sometimes a stop, or two, along the way to talk with friends or clients. A trip to the levee just to see how the river flowed. An ice-cold Coke or an ice-cream cone somewhere along the way.

He sat in the front seat of the Oldsmobile, the latest model, plush seats, electric windows, and fully equipped, including air-conditioning, perhaps the greatest luxury of all, especially on this hot, humid summer afternoon in late August. Away up north, where he lived, far from this small delta town along the Mississippi River, most cars had no air-conditioners. The only relief from summer heat back home would have been to roll down the rear window of the station wagon, the seat facing backwards, his usual place when his family traveled.

Today was different, somehow. His grandfather had not said where they were going. The boy glanced at his face and tried to guess, but could read nothing in the calm, deliberate features. His grandfather’s slight smile gave away little, since it usually graced his lips, except when he spoke of injustice or unrest in the world. Then it would become a thin, weary frown, and the corners of his mouth would draw in a sharp tisk of disapproval.

“Where are we going, Grandad?”

“You’ll see. We’re almost there.”

The town spanned only about ten or twelve blocks from one end to the other, at least in their part of it. But, the car had driven beyond the street where they often would have turned to drive to the lake or the country club for a swim on unbearably hot afternoons, like this one. Instead, they turned at the next corner to go in the opposite direction, down a street lined with ramshackle houses and unpainted shanties with bowed roofs.

He peered out the car window, his eyes just barely above the door. After a few blocks, they passed a corner market, where a few men stood out front, glaring at the large, blue car as they drove by, warily trying to see inside.

His grandfather turned the car at the next corner, and soon pulled up in front of a long, low, one-story building. Much of the white paint on the siding had peeled away. Out front, a sign swinging from the porch overhang above the steps read, “Still Waters Home for the Aged.”

He looked at his grandfather, who shut off the engine.

“We’re here. Let’s go on in.”

The boy opened the passenger door, stepped onto the street, and heaved the door shut. The heat bore down on his shoulders. His grandfather strode around the front of the car, and they walked together up the wooden stairs to the open porch. A few men, as old as any the boy had ever seen, sat in rocking chairs on the porch, and they rocked to a standstill, as he and his grandfather opened the screen door and walked inside.

The door opened into a wide hallway, which stretched through the middle of the building to the open back door. A reception desk occupied most of the center of the hallway, with room to pass through on the left. On either side of the hall, a set of large doors mirrored each other. Above the door on the right hung a sign labeled “WOMEN,” and on the left, “MEN.” Beyond the reception desk, another set of doors exactly matched the others.

His grandfather approached the desk. A caged fan oscillated with an occasional rattle on a shelf above the desk. A small, turquoise transistor radio, its cover taped together, played blues quietly to one side. The singer’s raw, plaintive voice desired a paradise with nothing to do.

The receptionist, a broad-shouldered woman in a blue flower print dress, her glossed hair flipped up at the ends, looked up and greeted them with a smile. A young boy with close-cropped hair, dressed in shorts and an open-collar green checkered shirt, stood beside her behind the desk. The two boys eyed each other, the way foreigners do, but neither spoke.

“Afternoon, Mr. Walter. It’s a hot one, ain’t it?”

“It certainly is, Miz Annabelle. This, too, will pass.”

“So right. So right. Can I help y’all?” she asked, with an expression nearing gratitude.

“We came to see Melvin Brown.”

“Yessir, Mr. Walter. You’ll find him as usual, all the way to the far wall on the right side.”

“Thank-you, Miz Annabelle.”

“And, who is this young man you bringed with you today, may I ask?

“This is my grandson, Will.”

“Well, hello, Will.” She turned to the boy standing at her side. “Sammy Lee, say hey to Will,” she prodded.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” the boy replied.

His grandfather placed a hand on his shoulder, and turned him toward the door to the men’s ward. The boy turned the knob and opened the door, and they entered a large, open room with canvas partitions, which separated the beds lining the walls on either side and across the back. Two ceiling fans whirred overhead, stirring the air, but providing little relief from the heat and humidity. The windows on either side of the room were propped open, but not a whisper of a breeze came through them.

They walked toward the back of the room, and approached one of the cots at the far right corner. An old man, withered and frail, watched them come nearer, as he lay in the bed, his head resting on a pillow, its blue striped cotton ticking stained with sweat. His dark eyes glistened, and he raised himself to his left elbow.

“Well, hey, Mr. Walter. So good to see you, sir,” his voice rasped.

“And you, Melvin.”

“Y’all is too kind to stop by on such a day.”

“Not at all. Came to see how you’ve been coming along.”

“Well, I’m doin’ all right. All right, I guess.” He brushed a fly from his face. “The doc said he had to take my foot, ‘count of my sugar.” He pointed toward the foot of the bed. The form of his remaining foot raised beneath the cotton sheet.

“I’m so sorry to hear it.”

“Matter of time. Just so.”

“I want you to meet my grandson, Will.”

“Mos’ pleased to meet you, young man.” He stretched out his bony right hand.

Will shook his hand. It felt like leather. He had never before shaken a black man’s hand. Ever.

“Good to meet you, too.”

“Your grandpappy and I go way back. ‘Bout thirty, forty year, I reckon.”

“Melvin and I picked cotton together, once upon a time, back when we were both young.”

“Your grandpappy could pick nigh two hund’ed pounds a day, once he got ta goin’.” Melvin winked.

“Hard times. Had to eat somehow.” His grandfather smiled.

“But, Mr. Tip, he had his eye on you.”

“Nothing much Mr. Tip Misner didn’t see.”

“Some things he noticed more’n others, I’d say. People, too.”

“I suppose.”

“You’ll never have to pick no cotton, mos’ like.” Melvin eyed Will.

“Prob’ly not.”

“Hard work. But, nothin’ wrong with that. Everbody ought to know what hard work is.”

“Well … I guess.”

Melvin glanced sidelong at Will. “You know what the white-eye is, Will?”

“Uh-uhn.”

“White-eye is when a man is played out, after workin’ a long day in the field. His eyes sets back in his haid, and his eyelids sag down, an’ all you can see is the whites.” His weary eyes mimicked his words. “You ever been that tired?”

Will smiled and shrugged. “Guess not.”

“Mos’ folks hadn’t. Not today. Everthang’s done for ‘em. You grandpappy knows. He never took nothin’ from nobody that he didn’t earn. He done made somethin’ of hisself. You can learn a lot from a man like him.”

“We didn’t come here to talk about me, now, Melvin,” said Walter. “We came to see you.”

“Well, you seen me. Such as I am. No good to nobody. I ‘spect that they be takin’ other parts of me sooner or later. Little by little. Like an ol’ gingerbread man. Jus’ gobbled up. You know that story, Will?”

The boy nodded. He eyed the place where the missing foot should have been, and looked away.

“Is there anything you need? Anything we can get you?” asked Walter.

“The good Lawd takes care of all my needs. Yessir. I don’t lack a single thing. Thank you, though.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yessir. Won’t be long now, I ‘spect. I won’t have no needs at all.” He smiled wearily, and laid his head back on the pillow. “But, don’t y’all worry none ‘bout me. Dyin’ is the last thing I’ll ever do.”

Will peered up at his grandfather, who stood nearly half again as tall. A slow, wry smile spread across his face, as he shook his head. Will noticed, not for the first time, the deep sun-weathered creases on the back of his neck.

“Bout got the white-eye now,” said Melvin, quietly.

They rode away in silence. Instead of going home, his grandfather took Highway 65 out of town, driving north along the lake. After a few miles, he turned left onto a gravel side road, flat and straight, and drove through the fields, white with cotton. A cloud of dust followed the car.

“Hard work is good. Work like that can come nigh to break a man. Especially when he has no choice,” was all he said. His smile had turned to a thin, weary frown.