ATDTDA (17): Easy company, 471

[Paul Nightingale]

Typically, "it was some time before [Frank] noticed he was riding south". He
looks for Moss Gatlin, as he did earlier for Stray: people usually show up
when he isn't looking for/expecting them.

Mayva has told him "one evening" of her dream: this conversation  isn't part
of the one in the preceding section, "the one time she did mention Lake"
(469). So in the carnival-speech ("both just keeping easy company", 471)
Lake is the great unspoken: Mayva goes back to her own childhood, erasing
any record of adulthood, marriage, children (although she does make herself
sound a little like Erlys). Frank translates what she has said into another
form of words: "All the time we were growing up ..." etc; and she agrees.

The passage begins with him looking for the absent Moss Gatlin. It ends with
him conjuring up his mother, from "useful thoughts" to "laughter".