I sat next to him on his couch and listened. “The porch boards are beat up. Put splinters in my feet. I’ll dig ‘em out with a knife if they get bad enough. They usually work themselves out though.”

“Man’s got to work if he wants to make a dollar. And if you can’t make a dollar then make fifty cents. Just don’t see why one man should make ten dollars while the rest got to make a nickel. Doesn’t seem right.”

“She said I was going too fast. Seventy on a two lane road.” He laughs. “Lots of turns on these roads. I told her when you find a good straight piece of road you should use it. She’s worried about the police stopping us.” He laughs more. “I’ll tell them too. It’s a good straight piece of road.”

Four years after we put him in the ground I got a call from a friend who said her husband had died in a fire. At the funeral I was so preoccupied with how she called me personally to tell me the news that I didn’t grieve at all. I knew him for years but damned if I remember anything we’d ever talked about.