There was Devlin's three, Quiston, Sherree, and Caleb, and Behema's Kumquat May, and Buddy's Denny and Denise, and the usual passel of Dobbs kids all circled close to be first at the cake. Quite a cluster. I seen little Toby way in the back outside this ring of glowing faces. He was still holding that cat.

"Let Toby in there, Quiston. This many candles gonna need all the breath we can muster. Okay, everybody? One… two…" – with all of them drawing a lungful except little Toby there, his chin resting between the ears of that Siamese kitty, both of them looking right at me, expressions absolutely the same – "blow!"

When I could see again, his daddy was standing right where he'd stood, lighting a Coleman lantern. He'd changed out of his purple jumpsuit into his most spectacular outfit so far.

"Goodness me! Aren't you something! You're almost as pretty as this cake."

Actually, the cake looked like one of them lumpy tie-dye pillows whereas his robe was an absolutely beautiful affair, purple velvet and gold trim and wriggling front and back with some of the finest needlepointing I ever saw – dragons, and eagles, and bulls you could practically hear snorting. He thanked me kindly and did a slow swirl with the lantern held up hissing above him.

"You must've locked your little woman home with needle and thread for about six months," I says. I'd had a glass of sherry with Betsy before and was feeling feisty.

"Nope," he says, starting to ladle out paper cups of punch for the kids. "It only took three months. And I made it."

"Well, my, my," I says, aiming to tease him was all, "I never seen anything so delicate done by a man."

The kids all laugh again but he took it some way wrong and the laugh died off too quick. Instead of responding to my rib he went right back to handing out that punch. To try to smooth over my foolishness I says, "Go on. I bet your wife did too make it." By way of apology. But before he could accept my effort Otis stumbles up and butts across the front of us to take a Dixie cup.

"Oh, I'll vouch for M'kehla's wife, Grandma, she doesn't make anything." Otis pours the cup about half full of brandy before he adds, "Anymore."

The quiet got even quieter. I thought he was going to look two holes in the top of Otis's head. But Otis keeps sniffing his nose down in his booze like he don't notice a thing.

"My first Christian communion and from a Dixie cup," he moans. "How rural. At my Bar Mitzvah we drank from at least clear plastic."

After his success aping the Brass family, Otis had got worse and worse, singing and reciting and cutting up. Yet everybody had took it in good humor. Devlin told me once that Otis was like he was because he'd been given too much oxygen at birth, so nobody generally took offense at what he said. But you could tell Mr. Keller-Brown was aggravated, too much oxygen or whatever. He reached over and snagged the paper cup out of Otis's hand and threw it hissing into the fire.

"Is this your first communion, Mr. Kone? We'll just have to get something more fitting for your first communion."

I noticed back by the fire his wife's sister stood up from where she'd been talking with my two grandsons and Frank Dobbs.

Mr. Keller-Brown turns from Otis and hands me the punch ladle. "If you'll take over, Mrs. Whittier, I'll see if we can't find Mr. Kone a more appropriate vessel."

The sister comes hurrying over and says, "I'll get it, Montgomery -" but he says No, he'd do it, and she stops on a dime. Otis reaches for another cup mumbling something about not to trouble and he says No, it's no trouble and Otis's hand stops just the same way. He still hasn't looked up to Mr. Keller-Brown's eyes.

The kids are beginning to get upset, so I say, "Why, if Mr. Kone gets a glass to drink out of, Mr. Keller-Brown, oughten I get a glass to drink out of?"

Little Sherree, who is a Libra and a smart little peacemaker in her own right, joins in and says, "Yeah, it's Great-Grandma's birthday." And the other kids and Toby, too, says yeah yeah, Grandma gets a glass too! Those eyes lift off Otis and move to me.

"Certainly," he says, laughing off his temper. "Forgive me, Mrs. Whittier." He winked to me and jerked his thumb back at Otis by way of explanation. I winked and nodded back to indicate I knew precisely what he meant, that many's the time I wanted to wring that jellyroll's neck myself.

He went into the bus and the kids went back at the cake and ice cream. I never could stand having people fight around me. I've always been handy at oiling troubled waters. Like when I was living with Lena: Devlin and Buddy would get in terrible squabbles over whose turn it was to mow the lawn. While they were fussing I'd go get the lawn mower and mow away till they came sheepfaced out to take over. (More handy than straightforward, to be honest.) So I thought the storm was past when Mr. Keller-Brown come back out with three dusty brandy glasses and shared some of Otis's brandy. I blew at the dust and filled mine with the kids' punch and all of us clinked glasses and toasted my birthday. Otis said that he would sympathize with me, being eighty-sixed quite a number of times himself. Everybody laughed and he was down from the hook. Five minutes later he was running off at the mouth as bad as ever.

I opened my little pretties and doodads the kids had made me and gave them all a big hug. Buddy rolled some logs up to the fire. We sat about and sung a few songs while the kids roasted marshmallows. Frank Dobbs stamped around playing the mouth harp while the big black fellow with the beard patted at Mr. Keller-Brown's drums. Devlin strummed the guitar (though he never could play worth sour apples) and the fire burnt down and the moon come up through the new ash leaves. Betsy and Buddy's wife took their kids up to the house. Mr. Keller-Brown took Toby into the bus, him still hugging the kitty. He brought out a jar of little pellets that he sprinkled into the embers. Real myrrh, he said, from Lebanon. It smelled fresh and sharp, like cedar pitch on a warm fall wind, not sickening sweet like other incense. Then he brought out some pillows and the men settled down to discussing the workings of the universe and I knew it was time for me to go to bed.

"Where's that giant purse of mine?" I whispered to my grandson.

He says, "It's in the cabin. Betsy has made the bed for you. I'll walk you up that way." I told him never mind; that the moon was bright and I could walk my way around this territory with a blindfold on anyway, and told them all good night.

The crickets were singing in the ash trees, happy that summer was here. I passed Emerson's old plow; somebody had set out to weld it into a mailbox stand and had apparently give up and just left it to rust in the weeds, half plow and half mailbox. It made me sad and I noticed the crickets had hushed. I was taking my time, almost to the fence, when he was suddenly in front of me – a sharp black pyramid in the moonlight, hissing down at me.

"Backdoor! Don't you never come backdoorin' on me or my little boy again, understand? Never! Y' understand?"

Of course I was petrified. But, truth to tell, looking back, not utterly surprised. For one thing I knew immediately who it was behind that black pyramid and that hissing gutter drawl. For another, I knew what he was talking about.

"The motherfuckin necklace I let pass 'cause I say 'She old. She just old. She don't know.' But then to pull the same shit about the motherfuckin cat… that's backdoor!"

Two big hands from somebody behind grabbed both sides of my head, forcing me to look up at him. Fingers came all the way around over my mouth. I couldn't holler or turn aside or even blink.

"White angel white mother angel, my ass! I show you white angel!"