When Leonard saw I was looking in his direction, his hand flew up like a grackle taking flight.

Vernon Lacy, my field boss, known affectionately to me as the Old Bastard though he was my age, decked out in starched white shirt, white pants, and tan pith helmet, saw me coming too. He came alongside Leonard and looked at me and made a slow and deliberate mark in his little composition book. Docking my time, of course.

When I got to the end of the row, which only took a little less time than a trek across Egypt on a dead camel, I was dust covered and tired from trudging in the soft dirt. Leonard grinned, said, “Just wanted to know if you could loan me fifty cents.”

“You made me walk all the way here for fifty cents, I’m gonna see I can fit that cane up your ass.”

“Let me grease up first, will you?”

Lacy looked over and said, “You’re docked, Collins.”

“Go to hell,” I said.

Lacy swallowed and walked away and didn’t look back.

“Smooth,” Leonard said.

“I pride myself on diplomacy. Now tell me it isn’t fifty cents you want.”

“It isn’t fifty cents I want.”

Leonard was still grinning, but the grin shifted slightly to one side, like a boat about to take water and sink.

“What’s wrong, buddy?”

“My Uncle Chester,” Leonard said. “He passed.”

I followed Leonard’s old Buick in my pickup, stopping long enough along the way to buy some beer and ice. When we arrived at Leonard’s place, we got an ice chest and filled it with the ice and the beer and carried it out to the front porch.

Leonard, like myself, didn’t have air-conditioning, and the front porch was as cool a spot as we could find, unless we went down to the creek and laid in it.

We eased into the rickety porch swing and sat the ice chest between us. While Leonard moved the swing with his good leg, I popped us a couple.