I don’t know her name. I don’t know anything about her. She is a sign language interpreter. That’s all I know.

She sits onstage during tonight’s keynote address for the Savannah Book Festival. She is translating speech into ASL. She interprets for upwards of an hour.

Meantime, most of the audience doesn’t even notice her. I mean, they see her, of course, but her job is to remain largely invisible.

Besides, most book-festival goers are busy watching the main event—three keynote speakers, seated in chairs, talking about books.

The keynotes have bottles of water. Their easy chairs are plush. They are talking excitedly. Their conversation is interspersed with bursts of laughter, and quick interjections.

She translates it all. The entire discussion. A conversation between three quick mouths.

The woman moves her arms and hands a mile per minute. Spelling long last names so fast all I can see is a blur. She has no plush chair. No bottle of water. And even if she did, she’s too busy to take a drink.

I am mesmerized by her. Namely,

because she is so good at her job.

So, I start looking around the audience to see who, exactly, she is signing for. I find a few. Amidst a mass of onlookers, I notice them. They are glued to the interpreter.

I see their faces, focused and concentrating. A few of them are wearing hearing aids. Then, I glance back to the translator, who is staring directly at these particular individuals.

And I find myself wondering what leads someone into this beautiful line of work. What compelled this woman to work with the Deaf community.

Maybe it was her mom. Perhaps her mother became deaf at a young age. Maybe the young woman learned sign language as a little girl because this was how her mom communicated.

I’m only guessing, of course.

But I knew a young woman like that once. Her…

She was walking her hound. It was a young beagle. Loose skin. Smooshy face. Uncoordinated feet the size of Lodge skillets.

I was in Forsyth Park, in the heart of Savannah. It was overcast and gray. There were various soccer teams on the field, doing drills. And I was mesmerized by the animal.

Hound puppies walk differently than normal puppies, on account of all the floppy skin. A baby bloodhound, for example, walks like a toddler wearing his mom’s bathrobe. Gleeful, but graceless.

I have a thing for hounds. Always have. In my life, I have been owned by four hounds. Two have been bloodhounds. One was a beagle.

My first childhood hound was Moses. Moses was full-blooded beagle, and I happened to be fully human. So we formed a natural friendship.

I’ll never forget meeting him for the first time. A neighbor’s dog had puppies. There was a sign by the road. “Free Puppies.”

There is no phrase in the English language better than “free puppies.” Not to a kid. I begged my mother to

stop the car. I pleaded. I supplicated. I implored her.

“We are NOT getting a puppy,” said my mother, pulling over.

The puppies were in a barn. I found Moses in the corner, chewing on a brick.

He was so tiny, about the size of an anemic hamster. And he wasn’t making any progress with the brick. Still, he was cocksure and confident that things would work out in his favor if only he could, somehow, manage to fit the entire brick in his mouth.

Moses’s mother, God love her, was lying on her side. She looked exhausted. When she saw me inspecting him, she moved her tired eyes to meet mine.

It was as though her drooping eyes were saying, “Please, take him.”

“Can I keep him?” I asked my mother.

I begged. I entreated. I beseeched. I invoked Scripture. I offered to…

Savannah. The sun is not up. The city is dark and foggy. I am the first one awake in my hotel.

I am always the first one awake. I don’t know why. As a kid, I could sleep until Carson came on. Now I get up before the rooster clears his throat.

I visit the front desk to ask the receptionist whether coffee is available.

“Not until six, sir,” she replies.

So, I wait in the lobby. This is a very swanky hotel. Nicer than any hotel I’ve ever visited. They have towels and robes so plush you cannot get your suitcase shut.

Six o’clock rolls around.

Nobody shows up in the café. The overhead music is Blondie. Then, Duran Duran. I’d better go for a walk before they start playing Starship. Or worse, Culture Club.

As far as I can tell, I’m the only pedestrian on the streets at this hour. Which is eerie, maybe even a little unsafe. Anyone could leap from the shadows and have their way with me.

Which reminds me of a

story my grandmother used to tell. As a young woman, she was on a train bound for Saint Louis with her aunt Mildred. Two masked men entered the train and announced they were going to rob passengers and ravish all the women.

My grandmother stood and shouted, “You can take our money, but leave us women alone!”

Aunt Mildred said, “Shut up, the robbers are runnin’ this train!”

On my walk, I pass a man sleeping on a park bench. He is covered with blankets, scrolling his phone. He gives me the two-fingered wave as I pass. Then he asks for money. I give him a few dollars.

But before he accepts the cash, he admits that he’s going to use the money to buy cigarettes and if I want to change my mind that’s okay but he just wants to be honest.

The internet reviews are in:

—This album sucks. I bought this album based on good reviews here but this is honestly the worst music I’ve ever heard in my life. Mozart was no genius, he was just some weird guy who got famous.

—While somewhat of a good book, you cannot help but realize that Mark Twain was a racist… You could never make this into a movie.

—I first read this book 15 years ago in high school. Then I read it again (or was supposed to) in college. Now, I get the (mis)fortune of teaching it to a new generation of students who need to be bored to death with American Literature classics. Students, I have a confession to make. I understand Huck Finn. I can explain Huck Finn. But nothing puts me to sleep faster than this pile of literary poo.

—I bought this painting print for my bathroom, but I can’t get beyond my suspicion that this artist doesn’t know how to draw hands. The clumsy attempt to hide

them behind a misshapen bowl just screams AMATEUR. I would not buy another Monet painting.

—Most boring movie ever made. The airplane is fake. Too many random characters wearing fez hats. Basically, it’s just a movie about people in tuxedos standing around a piano talking about “the letters.” Also, why is it in black and white? I waited an hour for an explosion. It never happened. Save your time. I don’t understand why anyone would watch “Casablanca.”

—Why are people calling Itzhak Perlman the best violinist in the world? I agree with many reviewers here, it sounds like he’s scared to play passionately. I mean, he’s a decent musician but…

—I’m 35 and this is the first time I read Harper Lee’s book. In the end I really just felt disappointed. There was a lot of racism in it, and no character development or resolution.

—Norman Rockwell…

Her name is Joeann. She works at the Hampton Inn in Jackson. She tends the dining room, making the breakfasts, and cleaning off tables.

She is easy to talk to.

“I learned how to be friendly from my mama,” Joeann says, warming up my coffee. “My mama believed in being kind to everybody she meet.

“But don’t get me talking about my mama. Won’t be a dry eye.”

Joeann is mid-fifties. Cheerful. With an armor-piercing smile. She has rich mahogany skin, short dark hair, and a face that seems to glow.

“My mama was humble. She went to a little country Baptist church out in Pochahontas. She had 10 kids, and we were all crazy. Daddy was a brick layer.

“Everyone in Jackson knew Mama. They knew her as the woman who’d help anyone who was hard up.

“She’d take anyone in. You know, strays. Didn’t matter who they were or what they done.

“One time, some local kids didn’t have nowhere to live, ‘cause they parents died. They was orphans, overnight. So my dad went and collected the

children, five of them kids. He brought them all home to live with us. Even the little baby who was still nursing.

“My mama raised’em all. Just like they was her own. And just like that, she had 15 kids in her house.

“People’d always ask her, ‘Ain’t you tired of raising kids, Bernice?’ She’d just say, ‘I don’t have time to be tired, I’m too busy trying to get to heaven.’”

“Another time, she was babysitting for a family up in town, they had a son who had some bad problems. When he became an adult, he struggled with addiction and drugs. Whenever he came home from rehab, his own mama wouldn’t let him in her house, on account of his problems, and his stealing.

“So, my mom would take care of him. She’d cook him hot meals, give him…

Somewhere in Louisiana. The Best Western. It’s late. The temperatures are freezing. I cannot feel my extremities. I am pretty sure the rock rolling around inside my shoe is my toe.

I am parked beneath the entrance canopy, unloading our luggage onto a hotel cart. There is a man standing by the sliding doors. Carhartt and jeans. He’s on a video call.

“Can you believe it?” the woman on his phone says.

“I can’t believe it,” he says quietly.

“I wish you were here,” the woman on the phone adds. “I love you so much. I miss you so much.”

He is a large man. Maybe six eight. Broad shoulders. Heavyset. With hands the size of supermarket chickens. He could be a linebacker.

His phone call is over. He buries his face in his hands. I don’t think he’s crying. But he’s releasing some kind of emotion.

I ask the man how he’s doing this evening.

“Brother,” he says. “I’m SO good.”

I have two choices here. I can (a) be nosey, or I can (b) do the right thing and let this

man live his life in peace without inserting myself. I should choose Option B.

“You sound pretty happy,” I say.

He nods. “I just got some good news.”

The man goes onto say his wife called to tell him she’s pregnant.

I congratulate him. He is overjoyed. He says thanks, and he says isn’t it amazing how the doctors said he’d never have children and here he is about to be a daddy, and can you believe it, and isn’t it funny how sometimes doctors tell you one thing and then God just goes and does another thing, and now, if I’ll please excuse him, he’s got to call some other people.

He makes another video phone call. This time, it sounds like he’s calling an older woman. The elderly woman on the phone says, “What’s up,…

Dear Texas, I am driving through your state today, and I just wanted to say that I am a big fan. I’ve always loved your heart. Your mind. Your hands. And above all, your Willie.

Also, your food. Your brisket. Your beanless chili. Your batter fried steaks. Your jalapeños and chiltepíns.

Your Kolaches.

I love your unabashed sense of regional pride. And I love how you manage this while also defying stereotypes that are so wrongly cast upon you.

I have never been able to successfully generalize Texans. I have sipped Shiner Bock with Sephardic Jews who judge chili cookoffs. I have visited the Sri Meenakshi Devasthanam temple, guided by a Hindu cowboy. I have attended Pentecostal potlucks held by non-English-speaking Guatemalans.

This is why I love your culture. It’s wholly and completely your own.

Your Lapland Cajun humor. Your Mexican pathos. Your African-American grit and perseverance. Your Great Plains cheerfulness. Your German work ethic. Your Scot-born stubbornness. Your Irish tolerance for distilled corn liquor.

Your Cherokee, Comanche, Apache soul, Caddo, Choctaw, Karankawa, Ysleta del

Sur Pueblo, Alabama-Coushatta, and Kickapoo.

You are “Austin Weird.” You are acres of lonesome prairie. You are the majestic Hill Country. You are miles of Monahans sand dunes, without a gas station in sight, testing the weary road-tripper who really needs to pee.

You are 80 mph wind gusts in Amarillo. You are Bob Wills. Blind Lemon Jefferson. Stevie, Strait, and Selena.

You are arresting vistas, beautiful rios, and a pristine Gulf Coast. You gave the world the towering Guadalupes, the mighty Chisos, the soaring Franklins, the magnificent Davises, and most of all, you gave us H-E-B.

You are the “Cradle of Liberty” in San Antone. You are “America’s Stockyard” in Fort Worth. You are a Yellow Rose. A bluebonnet. The Piney Woods, the Palo Duro Jacob’s Well, and Doctor Pepper.

When I began writing, as a young man, I was sometimes given the job…

Texas. The Hill Country. The local Walmart has a poster on the wall. It hangs near the entrance of the store. The poster is faded and aged, containing many three-by-five photos, housed in clear plastic sleeves, all in rows, on display for the world to see.

The poster calls itself the “Wall of Honor,” even though you’d have to go out of your way to actually notice the poster. Let alone honor it.

The modest snapshots of military veterans peer down at us busy shoppers as we all hurry past, moving so importantly, each carrying our plastic bags of mass-produced, homogenized consumer crapola.

On my way out, I see the poster and something makes me stop and take a closer look. I am standing before the Wall of Honor. And I’m struck by how many World War II-vets are on this wall.

Their generation is disappearing steadily, we lose a few dozen of them every day. You don’t see their pictures much anymore.

And yet as I write this, February

is almost here. Singapore fell in February of ‘42. The Germans surrendered in Stalingrad in February of ‘43. Dresden was bombed in February of ‘45. Iwo Jima was that same February.

I wonder if school kids still read about Iwo Jima.

My father was a World War II fanatic. An amateur scholar of the War. He was always reading about battles, studying conflicts, and learning about the aircraft. He read Ernie Pyle aloud to me. He adored Bill Maudlin.

My father painstakingly built tiny World War II airplane models, and model tanks, then gifted them to all my little friends, making sure each of us boys knew about the heroes who sacrificed their lives so that we could have the freedom to be in Cub Scouts and eat Spaghetti-Os and play with our Stretch Armstrong dolls in peace.

Those World War-II vets were his heroes. When he was growing up,…

The sun is shining in Austin, Texas. The hotel dining room is full of young people for breakfast. They are all tourists. I can tell this because they are wearing T-shirts that say things like: “Austin is Special.”

There is one young woman in the dining room, however, who stands out from the crowd.

She is maybe early 20s. She is wearing an oxygen cannula attached to a tube coming from a fanny pack. She is sitting alone at a table, eating breakfast by herself.

The young people in the dining area surround her, but I don’t think she is one of them. She sits on the periphery, engaged only in her simple but serene act of eating.

Meantime, her contemporaries play on their phones, clutching their devices tightly, hunched at the necks, faces lit with the phosphorous blue analgesic glow of their personal handheld opiate delivery apparatus. Nobody makes a sound.

But the girl is dining in a kind of tech-free reverie. She wears a half smile on her face. As though she doesn’t want to

miss one moment of this beautiful morning.

She looks out the window at Austin. A warmth emanates from her. It’s not a blinding glow, like a bonfire. But a Chinese lantern-like light, warm and soft.

I notice the purple track marks on her pale forearms. There are white bandages on her legs. She is slight. So small a breeze might knock her over. Her hair is midnight, pulled into a ponytail. I see a scar on her neck from where a PICC line once had a place in her life.

“Are you having a good morning?” I ask.

“I am,” she says with a smile.

She seems out of breath when she speaks. Like maybe there is some congestion in her chest. “How about you?”

“Ditto,” I say.

Another smile.

She goes back to eating.

The others in the lobby don’t even seem…

Today is National Puzzle Day. So, I bought a jigsaw puzzle at the grocery store. The box features an ornate cathedral with red roses and blossoming foliage. The cathedral is in Germany. The puzzle cost $9 bucks. I almost choked on my gum.

My mother and I used to do jigsaw puzzles. Big puzzles. We did them together. I was no good at jigsaws, but she was an expert.

Long ago, puzzles cost 75 cents, and provided hours of distraction. We needed distractions back then. We welcomed anything that took our minds off my father’s untimely death, and the gloom that came thereafter.

My mother looked for distractions that made us laugh, things that made us smile, games, puzzles, crafts, or road trips.

Once, she took us to Branson. She took me to see a Dolly Parton impersonator. The show was spectacular. After the performance, the woman in the blond wig hugged me so tight she nearly suffocated me with her enormous attributes.

When my mother saw me swallowed by the

buxom woman, she shrieked and started praying in tongues. She yanked me by my earlobe, drug me away, and played Pat Boone tapes all the way home. And I have been a lifelong Dolly Parton fan ever since.

Anyway, my mother loved doing things with her hands. She made large quilts from old T-shirts, she gardened, she did puzzle books, anagrams, crosswords, cryptograms, she knitted, crocheted, and painted.

She played cards with me, sometimes checkers, and she was a Scrabble fanatic. But jigsaw puzzles. Those were our thing.

My mother started each puzzle by saying the same thing:

“We gotta find the corners first, that’s how you do it.”

The idea was that once you found the corners, the rest of the puzzle would come together. Thus, we would sift through 2,500 pieces, looking for four corners. Once we found them, we’d dig for the edges.

We’d place…