I jerked. Other hunters with other guns aiming at other people.

“Yeah, they strung him up,” he continued. “Somewhere during the War, First that be. Bunch of white boys, maybe men, not fighting over there, so they fight over here. Somehow Abraham turn into the enemy.

“I’s born in 1899, so I be maybe fifteen or sixteen when he taken from us. And I start enduring sad after that. Sad and angry, like you now. I stay that way for a while. One day, I visit Abraham, the grave he be in and I hear a voice. Abraham’s. And he say, ‘Isaac, why you endure sad? Why you visit me and be so sad? Didn’t I teach you nothin’? Look at them pretty flowers growin’ on my grave. Them birds singin’ like the sun never stop shinin’. The one thing you can’t let go of is joy. ’Cause once they take that from you, they taken everything. When you come by this grave, don’t you be rememberin’ me swinging from that tree limb. You’d better remember me laughin’ and happy. ’Cause they might of killed me, but they never got to my joy. As long as you still got yours, then I be alive.’”

The old man paused. He took his flask back and took a swig, then handed it to me. He continued. “He was right. Pretty yellow and blue flowers growin’ on his grave and them birds just sing and sing. Trees growin’ high to the sky and I got to smile. And I ain’t stopped smilin’ since. Sometimes, of course, a little while. Sadness happen and you be a grinnin’ fool to smile at it. But Abraham be right. We all, all of us, gonna die someday. Your choice with a smile or a frown.”

He paused again, took his flask and took another drink. “This,” he said, indicating the flask, “was given to my great granddaddy by the man that owned him. My granddad was born just before the Civil War. Born into slavery. After the war was over and we was freed, the owner come back and ’cause my great-granddad and granddad and others stayed and looked after his wife and kids (nowhere else to go, my granddad said. You want to be runnin’ around with a war goin’ on?), he gave them things to help. A horse, some money, a gun. Things he didn’t need. This owner be kind. Kind to dogs and slaves, my granddad say, he can’t tell the difference.

“This flask go to my granddad, my dad, now me. After me, it go to my granddaughter, ’cause she be my favorite and I be old enough to have favorites. She a teacher. She teach white and black kids. T’other day she send a white boy to the principal’s office. She call and tell me this. His name be Henderson, she tell me. Same name as the name of that man that owned my grandfather. Maybe they not related. Probably, like she say. But maybe they be so.”

He stopped and opened the bag and pulled out something wrapped in brown paper. He unwrapped it slowly, spreading the paper out like a table cloth.

“You hungry?” he asked. “I got me a pile o’ crawdads. Don’t know I can eat this many. Don’t know ’bout you, but crawdads always help me when I be sad. Don’t always make me happy, but at least get me pointed in the right direction.” He picked up a big, dark red crawfish and offered it to me.

“Thanks,” I said for both the crawfish and the story.

We cleaned them, watching the shell pieces disappear in the eddying river. He sucked the juices out of the head, so I did the same. I hadn’t done that since I left the bayou. Too rude for Aunt Greta. I watched the thick red head disappear into the dark water.

“Feed some skinny lil’ catfish down in the Gulf,” he said as he tossed some shells into the current.

“Skinny? There’s no such thing as a skinny catfish.” I threw another head in. We were probably violating all sorts of pollution laws.

“See, there be a twitch of a smile on your face, girl. Them crawdads be workin’,” he commented.

But it wasn’t the crawfish. It was the kindness of a stranger. And a story reminding me that mine wasn’t the only or even the worst tragedy in the world.

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been kind to me.”

“’Course, chil’. Oftentimes you give kindness and get nothin’ back. The world goes that way. But the only chance you got to get kindness back is to give some out. When it don’t return to you, you just shrug your shoulders and go on your way. But you can’t stop giving kindness out. For every person stop being kind, the world a sadder place. The world get too sad, there be no joy left for nobody.” He tossed another head in. An unseen fish nibbled at it, bobbing it along out of rhythm with the river.

We sat for a little while, throwing shells into the river, watching for fish or crabs to start nature’s cycle. Birth and death. Birth and rebirth.

“You’ve seen a lot of people die?” I asked, not sure of my question.

“Course. Some of us easy, some hard. Old as I be, probably easy for me. Something hard when people die young. No matter how.”

“Why?” I asked. That was the question. The question that I spent four years of college studying. And all the time after avoiding it, it seemed. “How do you go on after death? After someone has died?”

“How’s easy. Sleepin’ and eatin’ take care of how. If I knowed the why part, I wouldn’t be sittin’ on this here dock, but be speakin’ at one of them fancy colleges or talkin’ to the president. Maybe God know, but he ain’t tellin’, near as I can figure.”