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biscuit, but I’ve got all day. When I run out of coffee, I step right behind the bar and fill up my cup. She cuts her eyes, but I pay her no mind, and when the men have gone and she can’t think of anything else to do, she goes ahead and serves me.
    It’s the worst biscuit I’ve ever eaten, but I don’t mention that. I eat it like it’s candy.
    “See here,” Reba says after a time. “I’ve told you before and I mean it, Finch Nobles, I don’t want none of them vegetables coming in here. You hear me?”
    I don’t say a word. I stare her right in the eyes until she darts her eyes away and starts wiping down the counter with one of them handy dish towels that you can use all day and then throw out. One of the construction workers had spilled a little salt, and Reba treats it like a nuclear disaster, careful to get every grain.
    “I got nothing against you,” she continues. “It ain’t personal. But there ain’t no telling what happens to a body after it’s dead. No telling what sorts of gasses it gives off. And I ain’t wanting to be the cause of nobody’s sickness because they ate the prettiest tomato they ever seen, picked right out of your garden. You hear me? I’m running a Christian establishment.”
    I drain my cup and hold her gaze until she turns to the grill and begins cleaning it. She pours water on it, and white smoke poofs, then passes as she scrapes burned drippings away.
    “See here, I ain’t wanting no bad feelings with you, but you burying ’em too close to your house, Finch. That Larrimore boy that died in the car crash a few months back is just about in your yard. And poor old William Blott is at the top of the hill that runs right down to your garden. And he died of a tumor . One good rainstorm’s all it’ll take—”
    “For God’s sake, Reba,” I tell her. “Don’t you know what happens to a corpse? It gets sealed up so tight that a Genesis flood couldn’t wash out the chemicals.”
    “You tell me what I’m smelling then, when it rains too hard in the summer and I walk by them drains. You tell me.”
    And I don’t have an answer for her on that count. There is a certain sweetness I can’t explain.
    Then a police car pulls up, and it’s Leonard, of course. He’s the only officer that works this area. He’s slow to get out, slow to make his way to the door. He’s even slow pushing it open, so that the bell that tinkles to alert Reba of a customer rings longer and quieter than usual.
    Reba increases her volume to make sure that he hears. “I smell that formaldehyde in the drains ever time it rains. And if it’s in the drains, it’s in the ground. And if it’s in the ground, it’s in your bell peppers, and I ain’t selling ’em here.” She punctuates her speech with a nod of her head in Leonard’s direction. He’s taken a seat at the lunch counter, but he’s skipped a chair, so that there’s an empty space between us.
    “How much do I owe you?” I ask her, and then I begin counting it out in change as she gets Leonard’s coffee. I use all the pennies first.
    “For all I know, we could end up with cancer, with William Blott just barely dead, bless his soul, and them tumor cells trickling down to your tomato bushes.”
    “Now, Reba,” Leonard says. “I think you’re out of line.”
    “I might be, but I ain’t selling them vegetables in this store. There’s been dead buried on that hill for a hundred years.”
    “Sixty,” I say.
    “And the way disease spreads, and when nobody knows what it is that causes cancer, and with all the things killing people today, you got to be cautious,” she adds. “I was doing my best to help out William Blott, and I approached him with Christian kindness. But he was a filthy man, covered in sores, and he’s buried right on that hill with drug addicts and common trash, and as far as I know, he didn’t even clean up his soul before he died, the Lord help him.”
    “My baby brother’s buried next to Blott,” Leonard