"She tell you I been on the sofa five years?"
"Yes, sir."
"It's a good sofa." Mr. Broussard tapped the spongy floor with his cane. "But a man wants to die in his own bed, Mr. Whitfield. You understand? Not on a sofa. Not in a hospital. In his own bed, in his own room, where his wife was." He looked up at the tall man beside him, from under the brim of the fedora. "That's all I asked y'all for. Twenty-four thousand five hundred dollars so I could die in my own bed."
Grant did not answer, because there was nothing to answer. He stood there until Bernadette was done. Then he went out to the porch and sat in the metal glider without being asked, and Mr. Broussard, after a moment, sat down next to him, and turned on the radio, and they listened to Clifton Chenier together while Tasha and Bernadette finished the exterior.
"You play football?" Mr. Broussard said after a while, studying him. "You got the neck."
"Barbe," said Grant. "Long time ago."
"I knew it. Y'all beat us in '99. My grandson was a linebacker."
"I remember," Grant said, and found, to his surprise, that he did — a cold night, a muddy field, a kid on the other side who'd hit him so hard on a screen pass he'd seen stars. "Number fifty-four?"
The old man turned and looked at him. "Fifty-four," he said slowly. "That's Marcus. That's my Marcus."
"He about took my head off."
Alcide Broussard laughed, a big, cracked, surprised laugh, and slapped his knee. "He'll be glad to hear it," he said. "Lord. He'll be so glad."
Bernadette Ledoux's full interior appraisal of the yellow house at the corner of Opelousas and Fruge came back nine days later at eighty-eight thousand dollars, as-is, and a hundred and six after repairs. The loan was approved by underwriting in Baton Rouge on the eleventh day. Tasha called Mr. Broussard herself. She told Odessa later that she had to hold the phone away from her ear.
Grant went to twenty-two more houses after that. He sat at the kitchen table on Pine Street where Precious Guillory's mother served him coffee in a cup with a picture of Barack Obama on it and told him about the night the ceiling came down. He stood in the Simiens' carport and looked at the truck under the tarp. He went to Lombardy Street, and sat in Lillian Moreau's front room, and listened to the tarp over the back half of the house breathe in and out, and Lillian Moreau — who had been told by her granddaughter exactly whose signature was on the review form — looked at him for a very long time and then said, "You want some gumbo? It's Tuesday. I always make it on Tuesday," and he said yes, and ate it, and it was the best gumbo he had ever had, and he told her so, and she said, "I know."