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discuss the business of politics with Dwight Claytor, who remained publicly courteous but who sometimes got closed-faced with anger—a tense flattening of expression—although perhaps only his children realized it. He kept his voice under tight control and even sustained a cordial tone, a flexibility of timbre that belied his displeasure. His children knew it well; their father rarely raised his voice, but they could always tell when he was disappointed or irritated or really angry.
    Now and then his restraint drove his wife to distraction. “There’s nothing
kind
about not saying what you mean!” she said to him. “It just leaves the children walking around feeling terrible. Not knowing what in the world they’ve done wrong.” And this was true enough, although it surprised her children that she knew it. “My father always said . . . he
always
said that he would never trust a man who wore a beard or any man who never showed his temper. He said it was the sign of a stingy heart.”
    Her husband turned a cold eye on her for a long moment that was suddenly quiet with the caught attention of all four children. “I won’t be insulted in my own home by my own wife, Catherine.
My
father always said to be careful what you wish for.” And then the tension ebbed a little as he relaxed and drew his fingers over his jaw from cheek to chin. “Besides, I haven’t ever worn a beard, Catherine,” he said to her, his expression mildly amused, but she whirled around with her hands clenched at her sides, her face wide with contempt.
    “Why, I just hope you can see that your father can be mean!” she said in the direction of her children, not speaking to Dwight directly. “Oh, I tell you, he can be mean as a snake! The things he says . . . the
way
he’ll say things to a person . . .” Her voice rustled furiously, and the children distracted her, asked her questions, begged special favors. They drew her away from their father however they could; Catherine never would let go of an argument on her own.
    As it happened, though, when Catherine had first met Dwight Claytor, what had originally caught her attention were the clean, round, unrancorous Midwestern vowels that shaped his voice as he politely defended some political position at dinner one evening. He had come to Natchez, where Catherine had lived all her life, to pay a visit to their mutual cousins, the Alcorns, and tidy up some family business, and he had become involved in an amiable debate with her father.
    Catherine had listened as he maintained his support of prohibition against the subtle derisiveness of her father. She hadn’t had an opinion about prohibition—hadn’t thought about it one way or another. But she liked the seemingly innocent unassailability of Dwight Claytor’s voice as it was pitched against the elegantly flat, sardonic questions and declarations her father put forth.
    “Well, sir,” Mr. Claytor said, “I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of industry in my section of the country. New enterprises springing up everywhere. And it certainly is true that industry, at any rate, has a large interest in the prohibition of
drunkenness.
It’s not a bit good for productivity, as you can imagine. The Anti-Saloon League is a powerful political ally for any man with aspirations. I suppose it could reach a point where there’s some danger in their intolerance.”
    “But I can see that you don’t worry as I do, Mr. Claytor,” her father replied, leaning back in his chair and pivoting slightly, crossing one leg over the other in an attitude that signified good temper and leisurely amusement, “that this whole thing might conspire against a man’s pleasure. It doesn’t seem to you to be the idea of preachers and unhappy women?”
    This was meant as a bit of lazy teasing, but Dwight Claytor frowned in consideration. “I don’t believe I know many of either,” he answered pensively. “But speaking simply for myself— as to pleasure,