Boy, that was pretty bad. While Anna led the way into Sherwood Forest, I tried to come up with a couple of other beginnings, but then gave up. The dogs ran everywhere after each other. Anna walked about ten feet in front of me, and I divided my time between watching where I was going and watching where her very nice rear end was going.

"I keep expecting to see Hansel and Gretel out here."

"Just watch out for wolves."

My mind moved over to the time my father went hunting in Africa with Hemingway. He was gone for two months, and when he came back my mother wouldn't let him in the house with all the rhino heads and zebra skins and whatnot he had brought home to be mounted.

"There it is."

If I'd been expecting a gingerbread house with smoke from the chimney that smelled like oatmeal cookies, I was wrong. The house, if you could call it that, was a crudely built wood thing that sagged to one side as if a giant had leaned on it. If there had been glass in the two windows, it was gone now, replaced by pine boards nailed across in an X pattern. There was a crude porch missing several floorboards. The step leading up to it was split in half.

"Watch your step."

"You did say that no one's living here now, didn't you?"

"Yes, that's right. But it was very much like this when she was alive, too."

"And who was she?"

"Wait a minute and I'll show you."

She pulled out one of those long old-fashioned keys and stuck it into the lock under the rusted brown doorknob.

"You need a key to get in?"

"No, not really, but it's better this way."

Before I had a chance to ask her what she meant, she had shoved the door in and a huge smell of dampness and clean decay moved out to meet us. She started to go in but then stopped and turned to me. I was right behind her, and when she turned we were face-to-face. She moved back half a step. My heart did a hop when it realized how close we'd been for half a second.

"Stay here for a minute and I will light a lamp in there. The floor is full of holes, and it's very dangerous. Father once sprained his ankle so badly that I had to take him to the hospital."

I thought about holes in the floor and snakes and spiders, and I yawned. I usually yawn when I'm nervous, and it either makes people think that I'm very courageous or stupid. Sometimes I can't stop yawning. When I thought about it, it was ridiculous: one of the great moments of my adult life – going with the daughter of Marshall France to the house of the person who had inspired him to create his greatest character in my favorite book… and I was yawning. Before that I was scared, and before that I was thinking about her ass. Not about Anna France, daughter of… , but about Anna's ass. How did biographers ever manage to keep their lives separate from their subjects?

"You can come in now, Thomas, everything's all right."

The walls were covered with newspaper turned yellow and brown from dampness and age. The kerosene lamp and light from the open door made the newsprint look like whole colonies of bugs walking around the walls. I'd seen Walker Evans's photographs of Southern sharecroppers who had "decorated" their houses the same way, but when you were faced with the real thing it all became sadder and smaller. A raw wood table was in the center of the room, and two dying chairs were neatly shoved up to it on either side. In one corner was a metal cot with a gray wool blanket folded at the foot and a thin uncovered pillow at the head. That was it – no sink, no stove, doodads, plates, clothes on hooks, nothing. The home of a recluse on a big diet or a madwoman.

"The woman who lived here –"

A voice like a sonic boom pushed its way in from outside. "Who the hell's in there? If you measly little fuckers broke that lock again, I'm going to break your fuckin' heads!"

Footsteps clunked across the wooden porch, and a man came in carrying a shotgun in his left hand like it was a flower he'd picked on the way over.

"Richard, it's me!"

"You little fuckers…" He was looking at me and bringing the gun up across his chest when Anna's words penetrated his thick skull.

"Anna?"

"Yes, Richard! Why don't you look before you start cursing at people? This is the third time this has happened. Really, one day you are going to go too far and shoot someone!"

She was angry, and you could immediately see how it affected him. Like a big guard dog that growls and then gets hit on the head by its master, he got all sheepish and embarrassed. It was too dark in there to tell, but I was sure that he was blushing.

In his defense he whined, "Christ, Anna, how'm I supposed to know that it's you in there? Do you know how many times them damn kids have gotten in here –"

"If you'd look once, Richard, you would see that the door was unlocked. How many times will we have to go through this? That is why I unlock the door every time!" She took me by the sleeve and marched me past him, out onto the porch. As soon as we were there, she let go.

When he came out, I recognized him from the barbecue too. A red, prickly farmer's face that looked half-tired and half-mean. He had a self-inflicted haircut that wobbled around his big head, a nose and eyes that stuck out too far from his face. I briefly wondered what kind of inbreeding his family had been up to for the past few generations.

"Richard Lee, this is Thomas Abbey."

He nodded absently but didn't offer to shake hands.

"You was at the barbecue yesterday, weren't you." A statement.

"Yes, uh, we were." I couldn't think of anything else to say to him. I wanted to, but I was blank.

"Richard's mother was the Queen of Oil."

I looked at Anna as if to say, "Are you kidding me?" but she nodded to reaffirm what she'd said. "Dorothy Lee. The Queen of Oil."

Richard smiled and showed an incongruously bright white set of perfect teeth. "That's right." He pronounced it "rat." "And if I didn't know your father as good as I did, Anna, I woulda said that he had something going on with my mama. You know what I mean – those two spent more time out here in this house than any of us ever did."

"Father would walk out here from town two or three times a week to see Dorothy when he was writing The Land of Laughs. He would put on his black sneakers and walk in the fields by the side of the road. No one would ever offer him a ride because they knew how much he liked the walk."

Richard leaned his shotgun against the wall and scratched his stubbly chin. "And my mama knew exactly when he was coming, too. She'd have us go out and pick a big bowl of berries, and then she'd sprinkle them with powder sugar. When he got out here the two of them'd sit out here on the porch and eat the whole damn bowlful. Right, Anna?

"Hey, you're the one who wants to write the book on Marshall, aren't you."

"That's what we have been talking about, Richard. That's why I brought him out here to see your mother's cabin."

He turned toward the open door. "My papa built this for her so's she could come out here and live a little in the woods. There were so many kids in my family that she said she needed a place to rest up once in a while. I couldn't blame her. I got three sisters and a brother. But I'm the only one left living in Galen now." He looked at Anna.

"Thomas, I'm sorry, but I have an appointment in town in half an hour. Would you like to stay here or come back with me?"

I couldn't see hanging around in the woods and jawing with Richard, even though I knew that I'd want to talk to him later if Anna ever okayed the book. I'd guessed that she would after dinner at her house and this little trip, but she still hadn't said anything definite one way or the other, and I was still too chicken to push her for a definite answer.

"I guess I'd better go back with you in case Saxony is there."