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years, during which she apparently made it her business to educate him; and well. By the time she introduced him to Marietta and myself, all but the faintest trace of his speech impediment had disappeared, and he had become the fledgling form of the man he was to become. Now, thirty-two years later, he is as much a part of this house as the boards beneath my feet. Though his relationship with Zabrina soured for reasons I’ve never been able to pry out of him, he still speaks of her with a kind of reverence. She is, and will always be, the woman who taught him Herodotus and saved his soul (which services, by the way, are in my opinion intimately connected).
    Of course, he’s aging far faster than any of the rest of us. He’s forty-nine now, and crops his thinning hair to a gray stubble (which gives him a rather scholarly look) and his body, which used to be lean, is getting pudgy around the middle. The business of carrying me around has become much more of a chore for him, and I’ve told him several times that he’s soon going to have to go looking for another lost soul out there; someone he can train to take over the heavy duties in the house.
    But perhaps now that’s academic. If Marietta’s right, and our days here are indeed numbered, he won’t need to train anyone to follow in his footsteps. They, and he, and we all, will have disappeared from sight forever.
    We ate together that day, not in the dining room, which is far too large for just two (I wonder sometimes what kind of guests Mama had intended to invite), but in the kitchen. Jellied chicken loaf, and chives and sesame seed biscuits, followed by Dwight’s dessert specialty, a Hampton polonaise: a cake made with layers of almond and chocolate, which he serves with a sweet whipped cream. (His skills as a cook he got from Zabrina, I’m certain. His repertoire of candies is remarkable: all manner of crystallized fruit, nougat, pralines, and a tooth-rotting wonder he calls divinity fudge.)
    â€œI saw Zabrina yesterday,” he said, serving me another slice of the polonaise.
    â€œDid you speak to her?”
    â€œNo. She had that don’t come near me look on her face. You know how she gets.”
    â€œAre you just going to watch me make a hog of myself?”
    â€œI’m so filled up I’ll not stay awake this afternoon as it is.”
    â€œNothing wrong with a little siesta. Good ol’ Southern tradition. It gets hot, you go snooze till it cools down.” I looked up from my plate to see that Dwight had a glum expression on his face. “What’s wrong?”
    â€œI don’t like sleep as much as I used to,” he said softly.
    â€œWhy not?” I asked him.
    â€œBad dreams . . .” he said. “No, not bad. Sorrowful. Sorrowful dreams.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    Dwight shrugged. “I don’t rightly know. This and that. People I knew when I was little.” He drew a deep breath. “I’ve been thinkin’ maybe I should go out . . . you know . . . back where I come from.”
    â€œPermanently?”
    â€œOh Lord, no. I belong here an’ I always will. No, just go out one more time to see if my folks are still alive, an’ if they are, say my goodbyes.”
    â€œThey must be getting old.”
    â€œIt’s not them that’s goin’, Mr. Maddox, an’ we both know it. It’s us.” He ran his finger through the remaining cream on his plate and put his finger on his tongue. “That’s what I’m dreamin’ about. Us goin’. Everythin’ goin’.”
    â€œHave you been talking to Marietta?”
    â€œNow and again.”
    â€œNo, I mean about this.”
    He shook his head. “This is the first I’ve told anybody.”
    There was an uneasy silence. Then he said: “What do you think?”
    â€œAbout the dreams?”
    â€œAbout going to see my folks an’