Our company talked and sang into the night, until we trimmed our lamps for bed and began climbing the stairs to our rooms. Then we heard a crash of pots and the waitress cursing. Coming down the master asked her why she was upset. I was startled by a cockroach and knocked over some dishes—Oh, I hate them; why would God invent such horrible things?

The teacher put down his fiddle and explained, The roach’s legs are infinity—notice their delicate working, their smooth synchronicity. When the Creator made these he was so pleased he desired to share the roach’s marvelous knees with everyone and set the roach in all world. That’s why the perfect symmetry of their legs is revealed when they die, a marker of the infinite covenant between the Maker and his children. Really? the legs? Such for the attention of sky-dwellers! laughed the maid. And he replied, Don’t believe me? Go look at your own legs.

That night, after the moon rose above the yucca trees, the woman stole out of her room, down to the creek, and there, on a large stone, shed her robe and beheld her legs nearly iridescent in the cool, blue light. One leg had a scar and the other several bruises at the hip, and she wept. The next morning, as we gained the North road, she came and silently joined us, her satchel full of locusts and honey.