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minutes before Rachel appears again with my dessert on the tray. Patrick stands at the doorway behind her. “Hello, Aunt Sophie,” he says as Rachel sets a saucer on my table. On the saucer are two frosted cookies sprinkled with small colored candies. “I guess Rachel told you the electrician is coming tomorrow to see about rewiring this end of the house,” he says. I nod. “He’ll have to get in here to work,” Patrick adds, looking around. “Hope he doesn’t disturb you too much.”
    “Is he a black electrician?” I ask. The irony is lost on Patrick, though Rachel pauses, a dish of orange Jell-O in one hand, and turns to look directly at me. Perhaps I only imagine that a faint smile gathers in the corners of her eyes. I turn and look toward the window. It is dark outside now.
    “No, he isn’t,” Patrick says. “Duncan’s folks used to run the taxi company. You probably remember them from when you used to live here—the Graves. They lived in that big stone house across from the library.”
    “Well, good,” I say. If Patrick thinks I am relieved to learn that Duncan the electrician is a white man, I will leave it at that. I can’t see what difference it makes. Let him think what he wishes.
    I have long since understood that fairness is a dream. Black or white, man or woman, rich or poor, life will do to you what it will. “DIED. MARGE SCHOTT, 75, controversial philanthropist and former owner of the Cincinnati Reds; in Cincinnati, Ohio.” This was reported in another issue of Time . As in Marge Schott’s case, unfairness may be coupled with efficiency. It is said that she once settled a dispute within the Reds organization by the flip of a coin. This, I believe, was economical in every way. As in Marge Schott’s case, also, unfairness may be coupled with generosity, for though she publicly made numerous offensive comments, her gifts to charity were well-known among the citizens of Cincinnati. Ask a dozen people in Cincinnati about Marge Schott, and you will get a dozen different opinions.
    After Patrick disappears from the doorway, Rachel moves about, setting my supper dishes back onto the tray. I look at the frosted cookies and the dish of orange Jell-O in front of me, considering briefly which to taste first. I imagine Marge Schott flipping a coin, and I reach for a cookie. For now sweetness fills my mouth.

Chapter 4
    Some Meteor That the Sun Exhales
    From its home in the Canadian conifers and high mountains of the West, the evening grosbeak has migrated increasingly farther south and east over the years. Perhaps its wanderlust was first caused by a food shortage in its native regions, and, flying south, it found well-stocked bird feeders to supply its hunger .
    Greenville, Mississippi, situated on the eastern banks of the great river, has an impressive heritage of literary talent. Shelby Foote grew up here, and Walker Percy spent a good part of his youth here with an older cousin, William Alexander Percy, who adopted him and who was also a published poet himself. Hodding Carter Jr., long-time editor of Greenville’s Delta Democrat Times , won a Pulitzer Prize. Another of the town’s award-winning writers is Josephine Haxton, novelist and storywriter, who uses the pen name of Ellen Douglas in order to mollify her aunts, who appear as characters in her stories and who, for family honor, do not want to be recognized by the reading public.
    More recently two Greenville women, Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays, have written a book titled Being Dead Is No Excuse , which claims to be the “Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral.” Without the trouble of opening the book, one can tell that it is meant for humor. It is not a book I care to read.
    The library in Greenville has a special permanent display of the town’s most well-known writers, close to twenty of them, while the local bookstore carries more than fifty books by Greenville authors. Greenville’s residents, though