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room that used to be the parlor. All the ceilings are twelve feet high. Fireplaces are in each room, some of them just for looks now, some of them still working. Behind the living room, the sitting room has been turned into my parents’ bedroom so they don’t have to go up and down the stairs. A generous bathroom has been added under the stairs, and a large kitchen has been updated. A laundry room is next to a back door that leads out onto a nice cedar deck that my father and his brother built years ago. In spring, half a dozen cherry trees blossom in what used to be a fruit orchard, looking like a wide swathe of pink cotton candy in the back and side yards.
    Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and a nice-sized bathroom that started out as part of the sleeping porch. The west end of the glassed-in sleeping porch runs along the back of the master bedroom to the end of the house. It used to be my parents’ bedroom. Now it’s my room. I like to go sit out on the sleeping porch early in the morning and at dusk. When it’s very cold I light a fire in the bedroom, but just for ambience. Two central heating and air conditioning units added twenty-odd years ago work just fine for the entire house.
    One of the other bedrooms belonged to my older brother and my younger brother. They both died in Vietnam . Now their room is empty, kept just as it was the day my brothers left. The other room belonged to me and my twin sister, Emerald. She lives in Oregon with her husband and umpteen children. We’ve never been that close despite sharing a womb and a room.
    There’s not much left of our land now since Daddy sold most of it and leases other tracts to farmers with cow herds, but enough so that we still feel isolated and protected. Just down the road, there are new houses with swing sets in the back yards and subdivision streets named things like Whispering Willow Wind and Cherry Blossom Surprise. Our street is still called Truevine Road , named for my great-great-grandfather who started a church right after the Civil War and Grant’s march left behind a lot of blackened fields, burned-out homes, and despairing souls. The Eureka Truevine church is gone now, burned down a few decades before when electrical wiring installed some time in the early thirties ignited a fire, but its name lives on in me.
    I started my car and pulled out of the garage that had once been a cattle barn, and set out for Holly Springs . It isn’t far at all, and in fifteen minutes I pulled my car up in front of the café across from the court house on the square. The old clock in the cupola on top of the court house has been fixed. The hands move slowly but steadily, clicking the minutes with big black hands.
    Budgie Mason, who manages the café and serves plain food at good prices, waved at me and I waved back. I knew her from my childhood. Her parents had lived down Truevine Road , and her father had raised cotton and lots of kids. He’d done well with both. Budgie looks a lot like she did as a kid—slender and energetic, with a crop of curly black hair she usually kept tied in a ponytail atop her head. The hair might now have some gray streaks, but it’s still tied in a ponytail on top of her head.
    It started to rain and I hurried across the street to the court house and stepped inside. In the center of the foyer sits a gigantic glassed-in clock, the machinations whirring. To one side is a staircase that leads up to offices and courtrooms, to the other side are more high-ceilinged rooms that house county government offices.
    I went straight over to the county clerk’s office and asked for an employment application before I lost my nerve. After all, once I’d been an executive secretary in a large chain of hotels. This was hardly a step up the career ladder. Still, an honest job is an honest job.
    Apparently, despite the glowing reports on TV and in the newspapers about the profusion of available jobs, it didn’t apply to Holly Springs government