The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Jenny Wingfield

as guilt. “We’re not guilty,” she said, a little louder than was necessary. “We’re worried. Papa John came within an inch of killing himself this afternoon, and if it hadn’t been for us, he would’ve made it.”

      Willadee sucked in a sharp breath.

      Calla just shook her head. “He wouldn’t have made it. He never does.”

      Willadee looked at her mother accusingly.

      Calla poured some tomato gravy onto her biscuit. “Sorry, Willadee. I can’t panic anymore. I’ve been through it too many times. You kids eat your okra.”

      Willadee didn’t say anything, but you could tell she was thinking. As soon as supper was over, she offered to clean the kitchen and asked her mother to put the hellions to bed. Grandma Calla said, “Oh, sure, give me the dirty work,” and both women laughed. The kids all turned up their noses while they allowed themselves to be herded upstairs. They knew better than to complain, but they had their own ways of getting back at people who insulted them. Next time they played War Spies, they would probably take a couple of female prisoners and get information out of them the hard way.

      Willadee washed all the dishes, left them to dry in the drain rack, and went out the back door into Never Closes. This was the only bar she’d ever been inside in her life, and the first time during business hours. At least once every summer, she’d insisted on cleaning and airing out the place for her daddy, marveling every time that his customers could stand the bitter, stale burned-tobacco odor that no amount of scrubbing could drive away. She was surprised tonight to find that the smell was entirely different when the place was full of life. The smoke was overpowering but fresh, and it was mingled with men’s aftershave and the heady perfume worn by the few women customers. A lone couple danced in one corner, the woman toying with the man’s hair while his hands traveled all up and down her back. There was a card game going on, and a couple of games of dominoes, and you couldn’t even see the pool table for all the rear ends and elbows. The way people were laughing and joking with each other, they must’ve checked their troubles at the door. John Moses was standing behind the bar, uncapping a couple of beers. He passed them over to a middle-aged bleached blonde and smiled, lips closed, self-conscious about the missing upper plate. He pretended not to see Willadee until she came over and leaned against the bar.

      Willadee passed his teeth across to him. Discreetly. John’s eyes narrowed, but he took the teeth, turned away for a second, and put them inside his mouth. Then he turned back to face his daughter.

      “What are you doing in here?”

      “Just thought I’d see how the other half lives,” Willadee said. “How’re you doing, Daddy? I never get to see you much anymore when I come home.”

      John Moses coughed disdainfully. “You didn’t live so far away, you’d see me plenty.”

      Willadee gave her daddy the gentlest look imaginable, and she said, “Daddy, are you all right?”

      “What do you care?”

      “I care.”

      “My eye.”

      “You’re just set on being miserable. Come on. Give me a grin.”

      But it looked as if he didn’t have a grin left in him.

      She said, “It’s not healthy to manufacture trouble and wallow around in it.”

      “Willadee,” he grumbled, “you don’t know trouble.”

      “Yes, I do, you old fart. I know you.”

      That sounded a lot more like the kind of thing a Moses would say than the kind of thing a preacher’s wife would say. So, as it turned out, John did have a grin or two left in him, and he gave her one, as proof.

      “You want a beer, Willadee?” He sounded hopeful.

      “You know I don’t drink.”

      “Yeah, but it would tickle the pure-dee hell outta me to see you do something that’d make Sam Lake have a stroke if he knew about it.”

      Willadee laughed, and reached across the bar, and goosed her daddy in the ribs, and said, “Well, give me that beer. Because I surely would like to see you get tickled.”

      It was after 2:00 A.M. by the time Willadee left Never Closes and sneaked back through the house. Her mother was just coming out of the bathroom, and the two bumped into each other in the hall.

      “Willadee, have you got beer on your breath?”

      “Yes, ma’am, I have.”

      “Well, forevermore,” Calla said as she headed up the stairs. She was going to have to mark this day on the calendar.

      Later on, when Willadee was in her old room, she lay in bed thinking about how the first beer had tasted like rotten tomatoes, but the second one had simply tasted wet and welcome, and how the noise and laughter in the bar had been as intoxicating as the beer. She and her daddy had left the customers to wait on themselves and had found an empty table and talked about everything on earth, the way they used to, before Willadee got married. She had been the old man’s shadow, back then. Now, he had become the shadow. Almost invisible these days. But not tonight. Tonight, he’d had a shine about him.

      He didn’t want to die anymore. He certainly did not seem to want to die anymore. He’d just been feeling unnecessary for so long, and she’d shown him how necessary he was, by sitting with him those hours. Joking with him, and listening with her heart, while he poured out his.

      “You’ve always been my favorite,” he had told her, just before she left Never Closes. “I love the others. All of them. I’m their daddy, and I love them. But you. You and Walter—” He shook his head. All his feelings stuck in his throat. Then he kissed her cheek, there at the back door of the bar. John Moses, ushering his beloved daughter back into the solid safety of the house he had built when he was a stalwart, younger man. John Moses, feeling necessary.

      Willadee was groggy, but it was a pleasant sort of grogginess. Like she was floating. Nothing to tie her down and hold her to earth. She could just float higher and higher, and look down at life while it turned all fuzzy and indistinct around the edges. She promised herself that, one of these days, she was going to have another couple of beers. One of these days. She was a Moses, after all.

      Her father’s favorite child.

      Chapter 3

      Kinfolk started pouring in early the next morning. Pulling up in the front yard, and piling out of their cars, and opening the trunks of those cars with a flourish. Huge bowls of potato salad and dishpans full of fried chicken were produced like rabbits out of hats. And corn on the cob, and squash casseroles, and dilled green beans, and fifty kinds of pickles, and gallon jugs of iced tea, and enough pies and cakes to founder a multitude. Which was what was on hand.

      John and Calla’s sons, Toy and Sid and Alvis, had been the first to arrive, along with their wives and offspring. Toy didn’t have any children, but Sid had two and Alvis had six, so what with Willadee’s three, nobody was worried that the family line might fade out any time soon.

      “It’s unbelievable how many grandkids I’ve got,” Grandma Calla said, not to anybody in particular.

      Willadee sang out, “But not inconceivable!”

      All her brothers howled with laughter.

      Calla said, “I can see I’ve raised a whole passel of heathens.” She was trying to look as if she disapproved, but it wasn’t any use. She approved of a good time, and everybody was having one.

      The womenfolk laid the food out on the tables, and the kids started helping themselves before they were supposed to, so somebody had to say the blessing quick. Nicey (who was married to Sid, Willadee’s oldest brother) was selected, since it would have hurt her feelings if she hadn’t been. She was a serious churchgoer and had been teaching the Sunbeams practically ever since she’d gotten too old to be one. She prayed