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dollar. If they did the dollar was his, his coffee and sugar and flour for the week—but they always did and it was quite a show, that everyone gathered to watch, as he talked to them sweet and low, ‘Petty-whoa, petty-whoa, petty-whoa,’ always guiding to the left, and they would work the tongue around, swinging their heads together, braiding and unbraiding their legs. So, Mr. Kirby, on this particular day, the oxen were halfway around, with three-four hundred people gathered around, my grandfather with the rest, when a guy drove up in a Buick, sore as a boil at the storekeeper on the Bryantown Road.”
    Mrs. Lang stopped up her ears by pushing her fingertips into them, but he kept right on: “‘Is that a way to do business?’” he bellowed at everyone. “‘On a Saturday afternoon? He’s locked up his goddamn store, so he can screw the egg-woman? Couldn’t he screw her some other time?’”
    “My grandfather borrowed the Buick, ran on out to his place, picked up his thirty-eight, and ran on down to the store, which sure enough was still locked. He called that storekeeper out and shot him through the heart. That’s how my family does, when something like this comes up. What wipes out that stain is blood! And short of blood, you ought to be thankful for anything! That I don’t do to your brother what my grandfather did to that storekeeper! You ought to be down on your knees.”
    “You said it once, no need to say it twice.”
    But now Mrs. Lang had taken her fingers out, and told him, very bitter: “You shouldn’t have said it! You shouldn’t have said it at all! How could you tell him that, with me sitting here, your wife? Why couldn’t you have more respect?”
    “I tell it all, so he knows what he’s up against!”
    “You did not! You didn’t tell it all! You didn’t tell why the store was locked up, the real reason, not the one he said, that crazy man in the Buick. It was so he could candle her eggs that the storekeeper locked up his place! She brought in thirteen dozen eggs, and he had to candle them—for that he had to have dark, and that’s why he locked up his store! But to keep from getting hung, your grandfather blackened her name, so he could claim the unwritten law! And it broke them up and ruined her life, and I simply do not see how you can brag about it. And I also do not see how you’re willing to do what he did, blacken a woman’s name, blacken your own Sonya’s name, to do in the name of your family what you should be ashamed of.”
    “I’m not ashamed of it, I’m proud.”
    “You mean to kill Burl?” I asked him.
    “I don’t have to say what I mean.”
    “Oh yes you do, because if you don’t, I’m calling the police and filing charges against you. Spit it out! What do you mean, Mr. Lang?”
    She said: “Louis, you heard him?”
    “I mean, on behalf of my child, so she gets compensated, in place of blood to take money.”
    “I already offered you money.”
    “Your money, you did. It has to be his money. And a great deal more money than the piddling amount you quoted to me.”
    “He doesn’t have any money.”
    “I happen to know he does have.”
    “I’m his half brother, I think I know—”
    “I work in his bank. I know I know.”
    “Difference of opinion is what makes a horserace.”
    “Was there something else, Mr. Kirby?”
    “I go, I bid you good day.”
    Mrs. Lang took me to the door, patted my hand, and thanked me for being so considerate of Sonya.

Chapter 4
    M Y MOTHER HAS ONE of the few stone houses in this neck of the woods, a pretty little place on Sheridan, a few blocks south of the Langs, and one block north of East-West, an arterial street in Riverdale. I say “little,” but actually it’s somewhat bigger inside than it looks to be from without. There’s a small stone portico, leading to an entrance hall, which is at the side of the house, not in the center, so the living room is quite large, being almost as wide as the house. It has a