Walking Across Egypt

Mattie Rigsbee is seventy-eight. She lives by herself in Listre, North Carolina (near Bethel). She claims she's "slowing down," but she still cuts her own grass and runs the Lottie Moon missions fund drive at Listre Baptist Church. This is the scene into which Edgerton drops Wesley Benfield -- adolescent, illegitimate, and delinquent, with a mouth full of foul language and bad teeth and a craving for good food.