He came home to become an alcoholic and a womanizer. After Boyd heads north to search, Fleming stays in the sharecropper cabin where he and his father had lived. Sometimes he becomes part of the thick and familiar landscape around him, sleeping under trees, eating candy bars, rejecting offers of help, even from his grandmother Julia, who would like to feed and comfort him. Albright is delightfully wacko, either on the brink of slap-out disaster, or over the edge. Fleming goes along on his adventures, but seems to be mostly marking time until something happens to him.
Several things do.
E.F. Bloodworth returns home after playing music around the country and being in and out of prison, and settles into a little trailer near Fleming. He brings nothing except his banjo and a set of his records that have never been played. He can't drink anymore but keeps some Early Times in a glass to smell from time to time. E.F. has a past to regret, but that past is also the source of stories that Fleming gently pries from him. E.F. is a powerful, mythical figure even in his old age and fragile condition, and he haunts this book.