As I begin to replay yesterday’s visits and wonder how close we were to walking back to her bedroom, Angela bursts through the door, bundled up in a purple ski jacket and gray sweats.

“I almost made it!” she says, pushing back her left sleeve to check her watch.

I stand up, my thoughts undoubtedly transparent.

Her face is rosy from the cold. It is eight-forty. I doubt if she has ever been on time in her life.

“A virtue of the dull, you used to tell me,” I respond, helping her off

with her coat. Why am I being such a gentleman? Amy would hit me if I tried to assist her. Yet, east Arkansas was part of the Old South. Manners were to be minded, whatever the circumstances. Forgotten habits have a way of reappearing.

“You used to believe everything I said,” she says lightly.

The power of sex. I can’t read Angela. Maybe she is not even conscious of the mixed signals I seem to be getting from her.

“I still do,” I admit.

When she sits down, I ask, “Is the Cotton Boll the best Bear Creek can do these days, or are you trying to hide me?”

She smiles at our waitress who is approaching us with a mug in one hand and a pot in the other.

“Wait until you see who the owner and cook is,” Angela murmurs, and says brightly, “Hi, Mckenzie!

How are you?” Our waitress nods vigorously and says something unintelligible. She pours Angela a cup and refills my mug while Angela writes something on a napkin and hands it to her. She frowns, and Angela points to me.

“How do you do?” I say, thinking I am being introduced. What must it be like not to be able to hear and speak? Given my tendency to hear only what I want to and to put my foot in my mouth, I might be better off. Lately, in the press there has been a flurry of articles about a debate

between those who want to bring the deaf into the mainstream and those who argue that the deaf have their own culture and should not be forced to adapt to the hearing world. Like religion, it is a useless argument for the true believers. Surely, it is academic in Bear Creek.