"Where's your truck going?"
"Nowhere. My truck's staying here."
Quincy's eyes went to the window, to the carport, and back. His face did the thing it had done since he was four, when he knew something was being kept from him and had decided, out of some private dignity, not to ask.
"All right," he said. "Bring back Popeyes."
"I might be late."
"Then bring back Popeyes late." He turned to the laptop. "Resume dictation."
Alton showered and put on clean jeans and a pressed blue shirt and his good boots, and then he took the envelope and the cashier's check and the folded letter from the glove box of his truck and his insurance card, which his agent had emailed that morning and Mrs. Toliver had printed for him on Quincy's printer, and put them all in a brown accordion folder that had once held his divorce papers, and went outside to wait for Ramiro on the porch.
Ramiro came at five in a white Silverado with a car seat in the back and a shirt with buttons, as promised, though it was a shirt with palm trees on it. He looked Alton up and down on the porch and said, "You going to church or to a funeral?"
"Drive the truck."
They went up Tanyard Road with the windows down because Ramiro's air conditioner had been broken since June, past the Baptist church with its marquee that said FALL REVIVAL OCT 18–20 ALL WELCOME and the shuttered Pizza Inn where Quincy had had his eighth birthday party, past the high school football field where boys in practice jerseys were running gassers in the late sun. At the light at Hollis Street, Ramiro put his blinker on and looked over.
"You want me to wait? Make sure it starts?"