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As a child I sat there for hours shooting BBs at Confederate soldiers or the English. I was a patriotic Yankee fighting to protect my home.
    My mother was still alive in that room. The basket with her threads and yarns sat next to her spindly maple chair. Her worn sewing slippers lay underneath the table, making it seem as if she would soon be coming up to use them. I could see her in my mind, long face and coffee-and-cream-colored skin. Her nose was broad but not so flat and her eyes were as round as some forest creature’s orbs. She always smiled just to see me. That smile was always waiting for me upstairs in her room.
    My father was dimmer in my memory. Much darker than Mom, he was thick. Not fat but strong like a tree trunk. He had big hands and a giant’s laugh. Nobody expected him to drop dead, certainly not me. Maybe if I had warning I would have looked closer, listened more attentively while he was still alive. As it is he’s just a big hole in my memory, a hole where there was a yearning. I looked away over the hills because if I paid too much attention to my father’s absence, the yearning would turn into a yowl.
    A dead leaf from the previous fall was tumbling on a sudden wind. Its progress was almost musical; it seemed to be tinkling in the breeze. I looked and listened and then realized that the phone was ringing downstairs.
    My foot hit the last step to the first floor when the ringing stopped. The leaf was still blowing in my mind’s eye and I was laughing. I sat down next to the phone, wondering whether or not to go up for my beans and cornmeal. My hesitation was rewarded with another ring.
    There was a great deal of static over the line.
    “Hello.”
    “Mr. Blakey. Anniston Bennet.”
    “Oh, Mr. Bennet. I didn’t expect to hear from you until at least tomorrow.”
    “I call into my messages every six hours unless I’m somewhere where I can’t get to a phone. You’re interested in renting me your basement?”
    “We can talk about it.”
    I thought I heard the hiss of a sharp intake of breath. Maybe it was the bad connection, but I got the feeling that Mr. Bennet was not a patient man.
    “I don’t have time to come out there again, Mr. Blakey.”
    “Well, I don’t know what to tell you then.”
    We were silent for a few beats while the chatter of the static went merrily along. At one point I thought the connection might have broken off.
    “I can come out there on Friday,” Bennet said in a restrained tone. Another conversation interfered with us over the lines. It was some foreign tongue, sounded Arabic but I’m not too good with languages.
    “What time?” I asked over the new conversation.
    “Four. Four in the afternoon.”
    “I’ll see you at four then.”
    “Four,” Anniston Bennet said one more time, and the connection was broken.
    There I sat, listening to phone static from some foreign land, happy even though I had just made the first step toward giving up my solitude. I tried to imagine the little white man coming into my kitchen while I was standing there in my drawers with a hangover.
    From there I wondered about the word
hangover
for a while. Was it an old seafaring term? Was the image of a sailor throwing up over the side of the ship, hanging on for his life? That brought me around to thinking about liquor, Southern Comfort to be exact. Ricky loved Southern Comfort and I did too.
    “Hey, Cat,” I said into the receiver.
    “Charles, hey.”
    “You doin’ anything?”
    “Uh-uh, man. Not me. Clarance out with his wife an’ kids. He sure don’t wanna see you after Thursday night.”
    “Yeah.” I paused, anticipating the drink. “Hey, Ricky?”
    “Hey what?”
    “You wanna pick up a pint of SC and come on over?”
    “Shit.”
    “I’ll pay you for the whole thing when you get here, man.” That was a good offer and Ricky knew it. “I need some help with my basement.”
    “Okay,” he said. “I gotta give my sister a ride, but then I’ll be