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take him, never put up a struggle. It was not that he feared Ann, I think, but more that he was simply relaxed at having seen his son again, at just having
touched
him and talked to him for a while, petted the dog together with him and asked him how school was going, if the other kids were treating him okay, so that Vern would then do anything I told him to: he’d be tired from the drinking, but, more important, just out and out utterly relaxed, utterly happy, and I could lead him away, back the way we had come, crawling into the dark hedge and then sneaking back across the street to our rented spy house.
    â€œYou’ll remember not to bother your mother with this, right?” I’d ask my godson, and he’d nod, looking down at his feet, too soon an adult, and say, “Sure, sure.” At first he’d wanted to call me Uncle Mac, but Vern and I had gotten him to drop the Uncle, and it made him seem like even more of an adult, sometimes.
    Vern was still working, right on through his illness; there would be the insurance money afterward, but until then there was always the alimony, and some months it was such a tight squeeze, he could barely make it.
    We’d watch Ann in the evenings, sometimes eating a whole brick of cheese in front of the kitchen window, staring over the sink, gnawing at it, eating the whole slab, looking back over her shoulder to see if either of the children was coming. Or angel food cake—she’d buy them at the grocery store instead of making them, and simply bury her whole face in one, eating her way through the middle until her face appeared on the other side, looking like some sort of clown’s, and Vern would begin howling again, slapping his leg and laughing, falling out of the chair again, but I did not think
it was so funny, sometimes; even from across the street, I could feel Ann’s panic, and it made me hungry, made me want to eat something, too—but instead I would get up and fix more drinks.
    Â 
    I slept so late that morning in November not because of the previous night’s drinking but because it was raining and I liked the sound of it. I liked having the big rented house and the chance to help someone out, even if I was on the wrong side. It made me feel like an outlaw, a desperado, which I had never been before, and I liked it. The rain on someone else’s house, with me warm and dry inside, made me feel like a bank robber holed up in a cave somewhere.
    I was against the law, though not as much as some, and I liked it; and I was only a renter, borrowing someone else’s house. If things turned sour, I could flee; I could leave like a leaf tumbling down the street, tumbling into the woods, away from the sliding houses.
    So I slept, smiling, warm and dry, with my hands behind my head, and I was a little frightened of what would happen when Vern passed on, when his liver finally stopped straining and I was responsible for his son—that thought would come at me from all directions, frightening me—but then I’d remember that Vern’s liver had
not
stopped straining and filtering, not yet, that he was asleep downstairs, and he would be until three or four in the afternoon, and I could go back to sleep, listening to the rain, which was coming down in a steady, soothing wash.
    I knew that the other people in the neighborhood, the ones with homes, children, and futures, had to be distressed—because when the Yazoo clay got wet, when it got loaded with water, it would start to move again, sliding down the
hill, pulling the houses and driveways and foundations with it, slowly—an inch a month during the rainy seasons of winter and spring, like some inept magician’s tablecloth trick—but that was none of my worry, none at all, and it was only those people’s bad luck, or just plain bad planning, that had made them build there, and none of it had anything to do with me.
    Still, it made me feel guilty. After about