"I'll tell you what," says Lucy.

"What?"

"Put your arm around my shoulders." She puts my arm around her shoulders. "Put your weight on me. I'm a strong girl."

"All right." She is a strong girl.

"God, you're heavy."

"Then I'll not put my weight on you," I say, not putting my weight on her.

She laughs. "Come on. Up the stairs."

They, the English Lipscombs, must have spoken exactly the same way, with the same doomed conviviality and the same steady tinkle of silver against crystal, when the Americans came down the river two hundred years ago in 1796 and up the river with Silver Spoons Butler in 1862.

In the bedroom Lucy says, "Do you need any help?"

"No, I'm fine."

"You are, aren't you?" She smiles, absently spits on her thumb, smooths my eyebrows. "But I'll help you anyhow."

"All right."

"What's the matter?" asks Lucy.

"Nothing."

"You look uncomfortable."

"It's this collar. No doubt it's the newness."

We had to take pins out of the pajamas. "Maybe another pin."

"Tch. My word. It's the stupid price tag. Hold still."

"All right."

The mattress is new and hard but not uncomfortable. It used to be a feather bed. The bottom sheet is fitted and snapped on tight as a drum. The top sheet harbors trapped cold air. But the patchwork quilt is old and warm. The pillow slip is new, but the pillow is old and goose down.

The silence and darkness and smell of the house is like a presence.

"You're okay," says Lucy.

"Yes."

"You seem all right but somewhat-distant."

"I'm not distant."

"You're not even drunk."

"That's true."

"You're shivering."

"I'm fine."

"I think I'll stay here for a while, if you don't mind."

"All right."

In Freiburg they have feather beds too. But instead of a quilt comforter, they have something like a bolster, a long narrow pillow to cover the gap on top. I wake early in the morning to the sound of church bells, not like the solemn tolling of our church bells, but a high-pitched crystalline sound, eine Klingel, yes, almost a tinkling.

We were hiking out of Waldkirch in the Schwarzwald. Though we had just met, we were both from the South, she from Montgomery, far from home and lonely, a girl named Alice Pratt. This was before young Americans bummed around Europe free and easy, sleeping in tents and hostels. We both wanted the same thing, to touch, laugh, be easy with each other, kiss perhaps-who knows!-even love! Yet we were shy and didn't know what to do. What to do? What to say? We made conversation. We thought of things to say. We spoke of mutual friends at Agnes Scott and Tulane. We were caught, trapped between the happy, safe, Wiener-waltz musical security of the Grand Tour of the 1870s and the shacked-up, stoned-out ease of the 1970s. What if we could not think of something to say?

"I'll cover you up," says Lucy.

"All right."

"Better still, I'll warm you up."

"All right."

What if I touched Alice Pratt? But how? We're hiking along, brows furrowed, casting about for topics of conversation, when all of a sudden and dead ahead, rounding the bend of the narrow blacktop road not two hundred yards away, appears a Tiger tank leading a column of tanks, a Wehrmacht officer standing in the open forward hatch. Maneuvers! I don't think we're supposed to be here. I grab Alice Pratt and yank her into the dark fir forest. We lie on a soft bed of needles and watch an entire panzer division pass. I am Robert Jordan lying on the pine needles. I hold her. She wants me to. When the panzers are gone, we look at each other and laugh. We have been given leave by the German Army and Robert Jordan.

Her mouth is on mine. She, Alabama-German-Lucy-Alice, is under the comforter and I under her, she a sweet heavy incubus but not quite centered. Her hair is still damp. She needs centering.

Miss Bett reads from her grandmother's journal: Later we worked on a silken quilt comforter. Mr. Siegel, our new German tutor, went riding with us. We can't stop giggling at him. Everyone was in stitches when he thanked us for our "horsepitality."

For Christmas Daddy gave a little darky to all seven brothers, each to become a body servant. Rylan took his to Virginia.

We are kissing. Her short heavy hair tickles my cheek, first on one side then the other, as she turns to and fro in her kissing. She needs centering.

I move her a bit to center her. There is no not centering her.

Now.

"Now," Lucy says.

The sweet heaviness and centeredness of her, I think, is no more or less than it should be.

Now.

Rylan Lipscomb, b. 1840, volunteered 1861 for the Crescent Rifles, Company B, Seventh Louisiana Regiment. Killed in Cross Keys, Virginia, 1862.

At Fort Pelham, Harry Epps, in for counterfeiting credit cards, knows how to beat the pay phone with a phony charge card. He knows a dial-a-girl number in Pensacola and how to get not a recording but a woman. "Now, why don't we both relax and tell each other what we like. I have all the time in the world," says a woman's voice in a soft Alabama accent, softer and farther south than Birmingham, but not countrified like a waitress at an I-10 truck stop.

I recognize the Picayune taste.

"I remember this feather bed," I tell her.

She pushes herself up to see me by straightening her elbows. "This is not a feather bed."

"It used to be a feather bed."

"It's not now and I'm glad. It's just fine."

"Why?"

"You're just fine too. Go to sleep."

"All right, but not right now."

"All right."

The feather bed flows up and around me, but something is missing. The bolster? A cold bluish dark fills the room. It must be early morning. Colly is laying a fire in the grate. I can smell the fat pine kindling. His starched white coat creaks. The match scratches on the slate hearth. He starts a blaze of pine first. The pine is so fat it can be lit by a match. As he sets the coals from the scuttle one by one, he holds his breath, lets it out in a hiss after each coal is placed. His hand passes unhurriedly through the blue-yellow flame. Colly is said to be the great-grandson of the faithful slave and body servant of Rylan Lipscomb.

The uncle is walking up and down the gallery outside, blowing duck calls. It's a high-ball, a bugling hoanh hoanh to get the attention of high-flying mallards so they'll cock a green head and come circling down for a look. "That's a lot of crap about war being hell," he says. "I never had a better time in my life."

Miss Bett reads from her grandmother's journal: I never saw men so happy as Rylan and his brothers when they marched off with the Crescent Rifles.

Finished Rob Roy. What a delight after Horace Greeley!

A couple is in for marriage counseling, facing me across the desk.

He to her: I like the explicit VCR in the bedroom, in 3-D and living color. We both get excited. You have to admit you do too. Doc, you ought to hear her.

She to him: Yes, but you're really screwing her not me.

He to both of us: It's better than nothing, isn't it?

I: (silent, flummoxed).

There is a honking on the gallery. The French doors are open. The uncle walks in. He has the flaps of his hunting cap down over his ears. "And I'll tell you something else they're wrong about. A little pussy never hurt anybody."

"What?"

"Get up!"

It is Lucy for sure, shaking me.

"What?"

Alarmed, I'm up, having jumped clean out of bed.

"Are you all right?" asks Lucy, taking hold of me. She's still wearing her terry-cloth car coat. The ceiling light is on. There is the disagreeable oh-no feel of a duck-hunting morning, dawn-dark, lights on, and leaving the warmth of a feather bed.

Lucy is eyeing me curiously, lip tucked. I am wearing pajama bottoms.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes."

"You sure are."

"Sure."

"I've got something to show you."

"What time is it?"

"Six."

"Six."

"Six. Get up. It's important." She's excited.

"All right. Do you mind if I dress?"

"No." She turns, pauses. "What?"

"What?"

"You were about to say something, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"What was it?"

"I've never been in Germany."

"Is that so. Well, it's been a strange night all around. Wonderful, in fact. Please hurry. This is important."

"All right."

"I want to tell you something else too."

"All right."

"About you and me."

"All right."

I have never been to Germany.

There is no coal fire in the grate.

Colly has been dead for forty years.