Mrs. Higgler had barely changed in the last two decades: she was a little fatter, a little grayer. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and she led the way down one of the memorial garden’s many paths. Fat Charlie suspected that he had not made the best possible first impression. She led the way and, in disgrace, Fat Charlie followed.

A lizard zapped up one of the struts of the metal fence at the edge of the memorial garden, then poised itself at the top of a spike, tasting the thick Florida air. The sun had gone behind a cloud, but, if anything, the afternoon was getting hotter. The lizard puffed its neck out into a bright orange balloon.

Two long-legged cranes he had taken initially for lawn ornaments looked up at him as he passed. One of them darted its head down and rose up again with a large frog dangling from its beak. It began, in a series of gulping movements, to try to swallow the frog, which kicked and flailed in the air.

“Come on,” said Mrs. Higgler. “Don’t dawdle. Bad enough you missing your own father’s funeral.”

Fat Charlie suppressed the urge to say something about having come four thousand miles already that day, and having rented a car and driven down from Orlando, and how he had got off at the wrong exit, and whose idea was it anyway to tuck a garden of rest behind a Wal-Mart on the very edge of town? They kept walking, past a large concrete building that smelled of formaldehyde, until they reached an open grave at the very farthest reaches of the property. There was nothing beyond this but a high fence, and, beyond that, a wilderness of trees and palms and greenery. In the grave was a modest wooden coffin. It had several mounds of dirt on it already. Beside the grave was a pile of earth and a shovel.

Mrs. Higgler picked up the shovel and handed it to Fat Charlie.

“It was a pretty service,” she said. “Some of your daddy’s old drinkin’ buddies were there, and all the ladies from our street. Even after he moved down the road we still kept in touch. He would have liked it. Of course, he would have liked it more if you’d been there.” She shook her head. “Now, shovel,” she said. “And if you got any good-byes, you can say them while you’re shovelin’ down the dirt.”