"Final notice," she read. "Your gas service is scheduled to be discontinued on or after November first, 1982, unless the past-due balance of sixty-one dollars and forty cents is paid in full or satisfactory arrangements are made with this office. If you are unable to pay, please contact our office at once. Assistance may be available." She looked up. "There's a phone number. And the office address on Main."
Nobody said anything. In the other room a clock was ticking, a big one, a mantel clock, slow.
"Paid in full," Hiram said at last. "Thank you, Grandpa."
There was a letter from the school. It was on the school's paper, with the little picture of the schoolhouse at the top, and it was signed Mrs. Leta Oberholtzer, Fifth Grade, and it said that Troy was a bright and conscientious student and a gifted reader, but that since the start of the term he had been falling asleep in class in the afternoons and had twice complained of headaches and once of feeling faint during physical education, and that Mrs. Oberholtzer would very much like to schedule a conference with Troy's guardians at their earliest convenience, and that she could be reached at the school office between three and four-thirty.
"He said it was his report," Velma said. "He said it said he was a pleasure to have in class." She put her hand flat on the oilcloth. "Well. It does say that, sort of. Doesn't it."
"It says that," Neva said. "It says he's bright. It says he's a gifted reader."
"He is that," said Hiram, in a voice like a stone.
And then at the bottom of the box, in an envelope with a Louisiana postmark and a return address in Morgan City on the back in ballpoint, there was a letter from Lyndell Breaux.
Neva read it to herself first, without meaning to. She saw her own eyes go down the page ahead of her mouth and could not stop them, and when she got to the end she sat there with it in her hand and didn't say anything, and Hiram said, "Read it, please, ma'am," and she did.