English there. She let the taps run to clear rust from the pipes and poured a glass
of water. She had less than two months before the fall semester of her senior
year started, and until the renters began showing up, Neda thought she’d make it
back to campus with weeks to spare.
*
One morning the doorbell rang. Neda had been up for a while, trying to make
sense of her father’s business. File folders were stacked in one corner of his desk,
another open on the blotter, discharging strips of calculator tape and itemized
receipts and Polaroid photographs. He’d always treated their livelihood as a
private matter, and looking through his records made her feel she’d walked in
on him getting a physical. Now she opened the window blind. A man stood
at one end of the breezeway. Lonnie Cadell. A long-time renter of her father’s
and nearest country neighbor. He used to do odd jobs, brush-clearing or junk-
hauling. Cadell was a big man, towering, and black. He dragged a foot over a nest
of crabgrass in the lawn.
90
“You know me, Lonnie?” she asked, shutting the door behind her.
“Neda.” His deep voice stretched her name on a rack: Neh-dah. “I was
sorry to hear about your daddy,” he said.
Old muscle ran like candle wax down his arms. He took her hand in his,
big enough to swallow Neda’s to the wrist. “It’s not dead, you know,” he said.
“No, Lonnie. The investigators were quite sure there were no survivors.”
“I mean you can still save this lawn,” said Cadell. “If you’re a mind to.”
She tracked the curb, eyes hot. “No, I want to—”
“—but you’re busy,” he said. “Busier than ever before, I bet. You’re
hurting, too. I been there before. I used to do these little jobs for your daddy all
the time.”
“I know you did.” She shielded her eyes against the sun and looked
through the line of walnut trees at the edge of the property. A neighbors’