“Now what kinda guest would I be if I turned up empty-handed? I wasn’t raised in no barn — snappin’ my suspenders, spittin’ in front a ladies and actin’ an ass.” Erron’s indignance was only partially feigned after having spent so long dealing in the kind of folk to look at him like he could take a piss on their pantleg or scoot on their expensive rugs at any moment. A man had his pride and his dignity, even when he had nothing else, and if not he was no man at all. It’d been one thing for them to assume he was illiterate, too stupid to grasp their lofty machinations, but Erron prided himself on being fastidious and mannerly.

“I got manners,” Erron grumped beneath the brim of his newly returned hat, adjusted it to rest further back on his crown before leaning over the side of his chair to root through his saddlebags. “I wipe my feet, wash my face, and clean my plate. Just don’t tell nobody or they’ll get the wrong idea. I might be respectable, but I ain’t no dandy gentleman frettin’ over their ascot neither.”

He’d been more than a little drunk when it came time to pack for his journey, resulting in a haphazard pile of miscellany every which way, but he’d taken care to wrap the glass jar in one of his shirts and stow it away in a compartment where he wouldn’t have a sticky mess on his hands later. The sight of the thing on the shelf in the general store of Saint Denis had made him laugh, reminded him fondly of his encounter with the man with the bear living in him, and he’d bought it on a whim and carried it with him ever since. Even now, after so long, he chuckled when he unwrapped it and held it up to the light. “I reckon you’ll like this a damn sight better.”

The honey contained within cast golden rays along the porch in the morning sun, interrupted only by the shadow of the sliver of honeycomb just thin enough to clear the corked circumference of the jar.