I stood back and smiled.

It wasn’t unusual for the neighborhood boys to ride their bikes over and watch with amazement as my little girl would work the bag with a right and left, keeping that steady, unmistakable rhythm I’d known from Kid Weisz’s gym during the Depression, when a hot cup of coffee and a donut was a feast.

Soon, Joyce called us inside and fussed at me for letting Anne run outside in her pj’s, the cuffs dusty with rich red mud, but she laughed as Anne continued mock punches, and Thomas woke up, only six, working a fist only to pull the sleep from his eyes. We sat down to a plate of ham and eggs and biscuits and grits and we said a prayer to our Lord and Savior and ate, Joyce refilling my cup when I returned to the kitchen from the bedroom, already dressed in my Texaco coveralls, ready for a day’s work at Slocumb’s – the filling station I co-owned with Joyce’s dad.

“Thomas is chewing with his mouth open,” Anne said.

Thomas smiled and chewed even wider with his eyes crossed.

“You want more coffee, Lamar?” Joyce asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I put your shoes outside, you had grease and mud all over them,” she said. “And would you mind, please, emptying out the ashtrays when you’re finished?”

“What would I do without you?”

“Nothing,” Joyce said and winked, and soon I was off, with a lunch pail rounded and red like a construction worker’s, and I followed a worn, smooth trail back behind our house and by the speed and heavy bags and through a thicket of brush, over the step of one, two, three flat stones in a little creek and then down a short stretch of smooth path and I was out behind Slocumb’s, unlocking the back door and cutting on the lights and opening up the front door for Arthur, a negro who pumped gas and cleaned windshields and had been my friend for some time.