My impulse was to immediately tell Jared and Horatio about Exeter. But I resisted that impulse in favor of some some discussion with Uncle Chester. He was not really an uncle. But no one ever called him anything else. He was an old black man of indeterminate age who lived by himself a few miles from our farm and whom I had known all my life. When I was much younger, the two of us would fish together. But as the years passed and his ailments increased, I visited him from time to time. When he finally died, I was devastated. I had never felt more comfortable with another human being than I did with Uncle Chester.

As Augustus and I approached the little shack where he always sat out front, I knew he could not see us. But I wasn’t surprised in the least when he called out, “Augustus, it is a pleasure to have a couple of visitors. Has Mr. Harry been behaving himself? I hope not. Good behavior should be left to old folks like me who don’t have no other options.”

As his cackling subsided, I bounded off Augustus and walked over and gave him a hug and kissed him on the top of his hairless head.

“What’s eating at you, boy?”

“No chit-chat about the weather and crops and such, Uncle Chester? Just right down to business?”

“Boy, I could be dead ‘fore we got done with the preliminaries. Be a wasted trip for you and no chance for me to hear your consternation. Start talking.”

So I did. I told him about Exeter and all the concerns I had about leaving the South to go to some school for wealthy Northern boys. I covered everything I could think of. Distrust of Yankees. Mary Kathleen. The Widow Jeffries. Leaving my two closest friends. Cold weather. And more. While I talked, he said nothing. If I paused some to gather my thoughts, he would cock his head to the side or nod ever so slightly. Otherwise he was still as a rock. And that was not the first time he had given me such a gift. We all of us should have an Uncle Chester in our midst who will show us such unflinching attention. There would be more happiness and less anguish in the world if we did.

When I finally wound down and he could sense I had finished, he waited a full minute before saying anything. I watched his gaze drift off to the side as I heard the slow in and out of his labored breathing.

“Whadayou smiling at?”

“I’m not entirely sure, Uncle Chester. Me being round you and smiling seem to go together. Not certain I know why.”

“No need to be,” he said as his eyes twinkled before he went back to contemplating.

“Before the war and before you and me met up, there was a young man, a white boy, named Thaddeus. I never did know his family name. There’s things about you and him got similarity. He didn’t have your polish and book learning. Still, I see a lot of him in you and the other way back.

“Commence one day before the trouble start, he’s gone. Didn’t see nothing of him ‘til long after freedom broke. Then one bright day, he’s back. Taller. Thicker. And not a boy no more. ‘Cept he don’t have that hollowed out look like the young ones his age who stayed here and fought through the trouble. The ones who looked like the devil yanked out their soul.”

I leaned back and rode along on his words.

“So I ask him, ‘Where you been boy?’ Then this story starts rolling out of him. Seems he went down to Charleston just ‘fore Sumter and got hisself on a ship going to New Orleans. He stay there just ‘til they close up all the steam boat traffic on the big river and then he get on another ship that take him down ‘n ‘round and all the way out to San Francisco.”

“Suspect that took a while.”

“Did. Took a good while. And he near went down with the ship in a storm way down ‘fore they make the turn to come back up north.”

“Tierra del Fuego.”

“Believe that was the place, but he didn’t say it like that.

“So he gets out there and he does all manner of things. Loading and unloading ships. Going out on fishing boats. Even tried traipsing back into the mountains where they found that gold. But by then there wasn’t nothing left.

“He’s way out there but he don’t forget ‘bout back here. He read the papers or go down to the telegraph whenever he can to find out what’s going on with the war. Soon’s it over, he make his way back here by the railroad or horseback or just walking. Took him longer that way than it did the way out.”

“I imagine.”

“So the question is – how does what all that boy tol’ me about his time out there – how does that tie into what you looking at by maybe going up North like your mama and daddy want?”

I nodded and waited.

“I ain’t entirely sure ‘cause I ain’t entirely sure about nothing in this world. But I do believe this. That boy Thaddeus? If he stayed here during the war, he mighta made it through. Might not. We won’t never know. But even if he made it through and didn’t get his limbs and spirit all tore up, he still woulda missed out on what he seed and what he did out West. He’s different now – good different – than if he didn’t do all that.”

I didn’t say anything right away. I wanted to see if there was more coming. But he was finished. So I got up off the old box I was sitting on and walked over and shook his hand. I said, “Much obliged, Uncle Chester.” Then I sat back down and we turned the conversation to other matters.