It occurs to me that I have probably erroneously assumed that the Chinese families in Bear Creek have homes separate from their stores. It looks lived in, but it is too dim inside to tell. Back up front, across from the counter in a corner, five middle-aged blacks gather in a semicircle around a Sorry TV set watching the Razorback-LSU basketball game on ESPN. I can’t understand a word they are saying. In front of me a black woman lays a sack of potato chips on the counter. Mr. Guay wordlessly changes a five-dollar bill, and I fall in behind her with a sack of plain M amp;M’s I grab from a box. From what I am able to hear of his interaction with the woman ahead of him, he has a pronounced accent. After I pay for the M amp;M’s, I say, extending my hand, “Sir, my name is Gideon Page. I’m a lawyer for the man accused of murdering Mr. Willie Ting. I’d like to come back and visit with you for a few minutes when your store’s closed or you have some help.”

Mr. Guay, or whoever he is, takes my hand, but says, “No business with them. No time to talk. Very busy.”

Up close I can see the lines in the other man’s face. Close to being contemporaries, if not approximately the same age, surely he and Willie had much in common. Business, their wives, children, whites, blacks.

The way each was treated in the South.

“This is about who killed Mr. Ting.”

The old man murmurs again, “Very busy,” and turns his back on me to fuss with his stock of cigarettes, which already seem adequately arranged.

I have no talent for this business of figuring out who-done-it, but I am becoming curious about how these people coped all these years and the lies they had to tell themselves to survive.

I drive back to Blackwell County, wondering which generation of Chinese-Americans has felt the most comfortable in east Arkansas.

Perhaps Willie’s generation. They didn’t have any choices and learned to be content by relying on each other. That couldn’t be enough for Tommy and Connie, nor would it be expected to be enough.