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appreciate their privacy,” someone had said.)
    The roadhouse was entered and departed through a loose screen door at the top of a steep narrow wooden stair, down which its customers were free to tumble at any hour of the day or night. Beside the stair was a pink limousine with mud flaps and bent chrome which had come to rest among threerusty refrigerators, a collection of oil drums, triangular sections of charred plywood, a renegade toilet, and a fire-blackened stove of that marbled blue so ubiquitous on old American frontiers. The limousine’s rear axle was hoisted on a jack—high as a dog’s leg on a hydrant, Lucius thought, noticing the dog lying beneath it—and the wheel had been missing for some years, to judge from the weeds grown up around the hub.
    Through the torn screens came wild hoots, hee-haws, and tremendous oaths rolled into one blaring din by the volume of the country music from the jukebox. As Lucius Watson emerged from his old car, he was greeted by “Orange Blossom Special,” which burst forth in fine cacophony and wandered out over the swamp north of the road.
    On this morning of late spring, dilapidated pickups and scabbed autos had emerged from the swamp woods well before noon, and an airboat—a sled-shaped tin skiff with a seat raised above the caged airplane engine and propeller in the stern—was nudging the bank of the open marsh across the way. Parked askew was a new black pickup truck on high swamp tires. Passing the cab, Lucius jumped backwards, startled by the thump of a heavy dog, which had not barked, simply hurled itself against the window. The silent dog—a brindle pit bull male—seemed to churn and froth in its need to get at him, stiff nails scratching on the steamy glass.
    â€œNow don’t go pesterin ol’ Buck!” A scraggy man in red tractor cap and dirty turquoise shirt whacked the screen door wide and reeled onto the stoop. When Lucius said he was looking for a Mr. Collins, the drunk waved him off. “Ain’t never heard of him!” The man had long hard-muscled arms, tattoos, machete sideburns, and a small beer belly. Half-blinded by the sun, he cocked his head, trying to focus. “Ain’t you a damn Watson?”
    â€œBillie Jimmie around?”
    â€œNo Injuns allowed. You’re Colonel Watson, ain’t you? You sure come to the wrong place.” The man jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. In a harsh whisper, he said, “Don’t you go no further, Mr. Watson, lest you want some trouble.” He nodded his head over and over. “Don’t remember me?” He stuck his hand out, grinning. “Name is Mud,” he said, just as this name was shouted by a rough voice from inside. Turning, he lost his balance, almost falling. He clutched the rail and sagged down onto the steps, denouncing someone in a pule of oaths and spittle.
    Mud’s red cap had fallen off, and Lucius picked it from the steps as he ascended. By now he had recognized Mud Braman from Marco Island, gone drink-blotched, and near-bald. Seeing his pallid scalp at eye level, the livid eruptions and scratched chigger bites, the weak hair and ingrained grime—seeing the soiled and scabbed human integument that could barely containthe furious delusions trapped within—Lucius perched the red cap gently on his head. “I knew your dad,” he murmured, stepping around the rank cinnamon smell of him and continuing up the stair.
    Inside, a man was loudly narrating a story. At the appearance of a silhouette in the torn screen, a silence fell like the sudden hush of peepers in the marsh, stilled by the shadow of a heron, or by a water snake, head raised, winding through the tips of flooded grasses. When the stranger entered, two scraggy men on the point of leaving sank back into their places, and the dancing women in their pastel slacks and helmet hairdos, breasts on the roll in baggy T-shirts, squawked and