While we digested our suppers on The Old Man’s front porch, his grandchildren chased fireflies in the summer dusk and, in turn, were playfully chased by neighborhood dogs. As always, The Old Man had carefully locked the collar of his workday khakis. He recalled favored horses and mules from his farming days, remembering their names and personalities though they had been thirty or forty years dead. I gave him a brief thumbnail sketch of William Faulkner — Mississippian, great, writer, appreciator of the soil and good bourbon — before quoting what Faulkner had written of the mule: “He will draw a wagon…