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who knew a hundred ways to take a load off and save his strength in deadening heat.
    â€œYou rich as Solomon’s mind, ain’t you, Bob Reynold?”
    â€œNear enough to suit me,” I admitted.
    Malcolm nodded like that was important information.
    â€œAnd where you get it all from again?”
    The kid had trouble understanding that most of the rich people in the world didn’t earn their wealth with good ideas and hard work.
    I’d never had a real career. Just hung around and pretended to be a poet until money came to me and then invested it, prudently. I am a cautious but shrewd investor with pathologically plain tastes who can be very aggressive when the mood strikes but seldom makes a move in the market or elsewhere without assaying the risks and covering my ass.
    My stockbroker says I am an opportunistic predator. Camouflaged.
    â€œInheritance,” I reminded the kid. “My parents died. And then my wife…”
    â€œShe drug overdose because y’all’s baby pass,” the kid reminded me.
    I had told him about my wife, how I’d met her during graduate school where we were both “poets” of some but not the same sort—as I could actually write a bit and she could only pose as a poet—then courted her, bought her a (nice and classic, I thought) used Cadillac, married her, indulged and endured her alive, suffered her dead, insured her to the hilt.
    Malcolm figured my wife and I had needed Jesus in our life to make our marriage work. Which was exactly what he thought everybody needed about everything. If you didn’t catch fish you needed Jesus. If you had a headache or got a rash or fell down the steps you needed Jesus. If you lost your car keys you needed Jesus, etc., etc.
    I, actually, could not argue with him about all that. Because who knew why you lost your car keys when you knew right where you had put them, why your mother got lung cancer when neither she nor anybody around her ever smoked, why some watermelons would be just the right firm and sweet and some mealy and soured and inedible and all from the same patch, planted and picked on the same days?
    â€œYour explanation is close enough to the truth to be its cousin,” I told my friend.
    Malcolm did not seem to be pondering out my statement. He looked at me and squinted.
    â€œMy daddy sell dope. You think he kill you wife wit his dope?”
    â€œNo, Malcolm.” I shook my head. “Your daddy selling Arkansaweed had nothing to do with my wife’s death way down in Texas.”
    â€œYou sure, Bob Reynold? You know my daddy he very successful at dope selling. And they say his dope is pretty strong.”
    â€œI’m fairly certain your daddy did not have anything to do with my wife’s death, Malcolm.” Indeed, I knew for a fact it didn’t.
    â€œYou swear on Jesus Rising Star?”
    â€œSure,” I said because it never bothered me to swear to any useful statements. “I swear on Jesus Rising Star.”
    Malcolm was quiet for a long moment. I imagined he was reflecting on Death and the Hereafter or some other religious topic. But he was not.
    â€œI don’t ’spect I’ll get anything when he pass, will I?”
    â€œWho you mean, Malcolm?” I asked.
    â€œDaddy,” he said. “And PaPaw. Momma if she aroun’. I won’t get no ’heritance from any them, will I?”
    I shook my head, because it didn’t seem at all likely Malcolm would inherit anything from his people. Most weed dealers in that area, once everything was said and done, netted less money than the waitresses at Shoney’s, all lived like trash and absolutely always wound up nailed and jailed. And Mean Joe’s place of business, UPUMPIT!, and his church were mortgaged to the hilt, from what Miss Ollie Ames at EAT had told me, so Malcolm wouldn’t get anything when his granddad Pickens died either, save for crippling debt or, if he was lucky, a