Mckenzie smiles politely and points to the Cotton Boll’s menu in front of me. It is an unadorned 8 1/2 by 11 pink piece of paper protected by plastic.

“What’s good?” I ask Angela.

Angela winks at me.

“Everything mat’s bad for you. The biscuits and gravy with sausage are sublime.”

How does anyone live past thirty over here?

“I’ll just take some toast,” I say to Mckenzie.

The girl knits her brow. Angela says, “You have to write it. She can’t read lips any better than you can.”

So she remembers, too. Embarrassed, I print out in block letters the words toast and jelly and push the paper over to Angela, who scribbles the works! and hands it to the girl.

Mckenzie gives me a look that suggests I have insulted the honor of the Cotton Boll, but turns on her heel and marches back to the kitchen.

Cautiously, I ask Angela, “How are you today?” “I’m fine,” Angela says, her voice neutral but friendly.

“Mrs. Petty thinks you’ve come back to farm.”

We both laugh at the same time. For someone who was raised in an environment so uniformly rural, I was remarkably ignorant of Bear Creek’s lifeblood and still am. I stayed in town and cruised Main Street with my friends.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mr. Carpenter, my old junior high science teacher, doddering toward me. He must have been around my present age when he taught me, my last year in Bear Creek before I went to Subiaco. I loved ninth grade science. He made “the laws of nature,” his term for the mathematical formulas he wrote on the board, seem real. Physics, three years later at Subiaco, was just a bunch of numbers I couldn’t get to add up. Mi. Carpenter gave us the illusion the world could be comprehended if we just had the brains to do it. As an adult, I realized what a hoax he had played on us, but thanks to his passion, for years afterwards I retained a vague hope somebody would figure it out.