Summer's Day 1950

SUMMER'S DAY 1950

by Robert Klassen

The leaves on the apple trees are a deeper shade of green in the early morning. At 5:30 a.m. it is finally cool and I want to sleep. I curl up and try to ignore Dad's voice. "Time to rise and shine, Bobbie. You're serving this week. Remember?" I didn't remember. I thought about it. Ride my new Schwinn two miles into town, to the Church. Sounds good. Have breakfast with Grandma. Sounds better. I rise, take off my pajamas, and put on the town clothes. I go into the kitchen. Mom is stirring oatmeal at the stove. Coffee boiling, bread toasting. I stand at the sink, looking out of the window beyond the yard and the fence, past the Martin bird-house, over the wheat field and the hay field to the woodland at the boundary of our farm. Dad says he planted that woodland in black locust trees for fence posts. The trees have long thorns. I have to be very careful in there when I'm hunting for rabbits. Beyond the woods is the New York Central Railroad tracks and I see a freight train moving slowly westward toward Chicago. "Better get a move on, Bobby." "OK, Mom." She comes over and gives me a kiss on the forehead. I try to duck. "You come right home after Church," she says, "and watch for cars." I go out the back door, careful to not let the screen door slam and I'm not sure I heard all of that. I go around the north side of the house toward the garage, thinking about my new bike. Nobody has a bike like mine. I pause at the dog kennel. Lady is sprawled on her back at the kennel door, not quite awake yet. I squat down to scratch her ears and she yawns and smiles up at me, golden tail slowly slapping the ground. On to the garage and open the door and then open the front gate. I get out my Schwinn -- Hear the trumpets sound! -- and check her over for nocturnal dust or secretly inflicted scratches. Nothing. She is perfectly new, red and white and gleaming. I climb aboard and away we go out the gate and around the corner onto Orchard Avenue. I wave to Mom. I count the months: my birthday was last November and this is almost July so it has been seven months. I pass the maple grove on the right and Uncle Gene's house on the left.. It looks like nobody is up yet. I hear the geese calling from behind the house, down by the barn. Downhill now, into the flats, oak and maple woods on the left, our pasture rising steeply on the right; overhead, arched branches of tall elms reach over the road. In the depth of the flats a pocket of chill air raises goose bumps. I pass the abandoned farmhouse now called the girlscout house, and I ride into the yellow sunlight again. It's uphill now and I pump hard to maintain speed to the railroad crossing. The town begins here, at the tracks. I bump across the five pairs of rails and follow the road to the left where it runs parallel to the railroad for half a mile. This is called Second Street and along the right side I am passing a neat row of houses complete with maple-tree shaded sidewalks. On the level stretch I ease up and practice riding no-hands. This is expressly forbidden by Dad and Mom and even by my brother Johnny, who taught me how to do it. I can go a few feet at a time, coasting, wobbling, but not falling. I wouldn't want to scratch up my new bike. I started practicing no-hands last year on Mom's old bike but I couldn't make any progress on the rutted farm lanes and they wouldn't let me ride on the road. Johnny and cousin Wayne used to do it all time, coasting fast down into the flats with their feet up on the handlebars. Now they have cars and they don't ride their bikes anymore. Downhill again, the street veers away from the tracks and now there are houses on both sides with curbs, sidewalks, and maple trees. The town is called the Maple City. In the early spring they make maple syrup and maple sugar. I arrive at the Lincoln Way stop sign and wait for a break in the passing traffic. Men are on their way to work at the plant. "Aunt Alice," Dad calls it, Allis-Chalmers, Harvester Division. I get a break and run my bike across. I am in the town proper now, with the houses laid out in regular city blocks. After nine blocks I reach the corner of LeRoy's Market and the Holy Family Hospital and decide to turn right and ride past Grandma's house. Dad bought this old house last year and rebuilt it. After he finished it, Grandma and Aunt Margaret moved out of the upstairs apartment at Uncle Gene's and into this little house. It is situated just across the street from the hospital. Almost every morning Grandma walks the three blocks to the Church and now I follow her route. And there she is. I coast to a stop and walk with her. "Why Bobbie, you've got your new wheel." That's what she calls my bike. "Why don't you leave it at the house," she says, pointing down the street. I ride back and park by the porch, then ran to catch up. Grandma is wearing her long black gown with all the little buttons down the front and a black knitted shawl. Pinned to that gown under the shawl is her hearing-aid. When you talk to Grandma you have to aim your voice at her heart. Whenever she doesn't want to follow a conversation she will reach up under that shawl and turn her hearing-aid off. Aunt Gladys and Aunt Mary come into town every Thursday afternoon to visit her. They both have loud, screechy voices and they sit on either side of Grandma and screech out their gossip at each other. Grandma turns off her hearing-aid, opens her Bible, and sits there smiling. I don't know why they do it but it is the same every week. I know because I mow her lawn on Thursdays. When we arrive at the Church I help Grandma up the stairs and open the door for her. They say that she is eighty years old and she does look small and frail. I know that isn't exactly true but I open the door for her anyway. Servers are not allowed to walk in the front door and to cross in front of the altar into the sacristy so I go around the rectory outside and enter through the sacristy door. The sacristy always makes me feel funny. It is dark, for one thing, especially when coming in from the bright morning sun. Small stained-glass windows in the east wall permit bright shafts of colored light to cross the gloomy room. Dark walnut cabinets containing the priests' vestments line the walls. One small, carved cabinet holds the water and the wine cruets and the finger bowl. There is also a large, ornate armchair upholstered with maroon velvet. In front of it stands a wrought-iron kneeler with upholstered pads for knees and elbows. Father Van Rie is putting on his vestments, muttering in Latin. He pauses to eye me and says good morning in his Dutch accent. He is a portly old man with thin grey hair and the kind of blue eyes that run in our family. I often wonder if we are related somehow. I greet him formally, as instructed by the nuns, and slip past him into the narrow hallway which leads behind the altar to the cloakroom. John Thomas is already there buttoning up his cassock. John and I had a terrible fight in the school yard during recess two years ago, in the second grade. He beat me up. Now we are the best of friends. John buys my cigarettes. I mean that John can go into the liquor store next to his home and buy cigarettes for his "brother". Then he sells them to me. As I get into my own cassock and surplice I arrange to buy a pack of Fatimas from him later on. Father Van Rie calls us and we hurry through the hallway, pausing at the incense cabinet to get some matches. My favorite job for Sunday mass is to light the incense. The golden burners hang from long, slender chains. I would take a three inch wafer of charcoal, break it into quarters, light one and drop it into the burner, then sprinkle on the incense; the smoke fills the hallway with such sweet odor it always makes me feel hungry. John Thomas takes a book of matches and goes to light the taper and then to light the candles on the altar. I pour wine into the wine cruet and water into the water cruet, put them on a small silver tray with the finger bowl, and carry them out into the chancel, careful to genuflect before the tabernacle without spilling anything and deposit the tray on a small table. I count two nuns and three parishioners, including Grandma, as I return. We form a tiny procession of three with John Thomas and I foremost and Father carrying the covered chalice behind. We sweep out of the door and around the altar, genuflect, and Father ascends to the tabernacle. He begins: "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen. Introibo ad altare Dei." We respond, "Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam." During the past school year the older boys drilled us in the Latin responses and now we are capable on our own. We have no idea what the words mean. Our voices reciting the Latin phrases echo through the vacant building and blend with the colored sunlight and the candle light and the odors of burning wax and lingering incense. Memorizing the "Confiteor" took me a long time and I finally had it perfect. "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" appears in the middle of this response and the nuns told us that it means "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." The nuns are always telling us that we are terrible sinners and that we were born with Original Sin. In the second grade we were taught how to go to confession and the first thing we say is, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." I am still trying to figure out the difference between original sin, a venial sin, and a mortal sin. The nuns tell us that if we die with a mortal sin on our souls we will go straight to hell, so it seems to me that it's pretty important to know the difference. What has got me concerned is that the rules keep changing just like they do in the games we play at home. In the first and second grade the nuns told us that lying and stealing and killing and taking God's name in vain were mortal sins. By third grade and First Communion, however, swearing and lying had been demoted to a venial sin and theft depended on the value of what you stole. It is all right with God if you steal food when you are starving and it is good to kill North Koreans and Chinese. It didn't make sense to me and I asked about it and Sister Ursala made me stay after school to write "I will not argue with the teacher." one hundred times on the blackboard. Soon the mass was finished and John extinguished the candles while I put things away. Grandma was waiting for me when I got out. We walked together back to her house and she invited me in for breakfast. She served her homemade raisin rolls which are thick and gooey with sugar and cinnamon and raisins. I eat three of them and have two glasses of milk. I thank her and leave. The morning is glorious, bright and clean, the robins are singing, the sparrows chirping. I ride my bike past the hospital and the market down the tree-lined streets toward the commercial heart of town. Crossing Lincoln Way is not as difficult now that most people are at work. I turn left at Park Street. Why they call it that I don't know, there is no park and hardly any street; a spur line runs down the middle from the main railroad tracks to the feed store and the lumberyard. I turn left and follow the track to John Thomas' house. This is a tumbledown structure with peeling paint and junk cars on a bare earth lot. I have never been inside and I am not curious to do so now. John is there on the corner with his bike and we ride together as far as the lumberyard. I can hear somebody yelling his name back at the house. He passes over the pack of cigarettes and I give him a quarter. I know that he only paid fifteen cents at the liquor store but since I can't even go in there I don't mind giving him the extra dime. He heads for home and I go on and turn right on First Street. I am going home by a different route. First Street passes under the tracks via a massive stone vault and swings by the Allis Chalmers proving grounds. There they are test driving the Ontos, an armored shell-firing vehicle they are building for the Marine Corps. I pause to watch the little tank roar around the track. With its six gun-barrels on top it looks dangerous. I have a model of it at home. I go on, crossing the little swamp where the redwing blackbirds nest in the thick growth of cattails and willow trees, uphill through another cluster of cross streets and houses and then downhill to the lake. Stone Lake is roughly circular and covers about six-hundred acres. Our farm is about half way around the lake to the west, but I can see no part of it because of the dense woodland that covers the shoreline. The steep hillsides that surround the lake are broken here and there by narrow valleys. The pasture behind our barn is one of them. Another one on the north side of the lake forms an actual water channel leading to Pine Lake. A third is where I stand, a narrow channel that leads toward Fish Lake and the middle of town. In times past, they say, you could board a little steamboat in town and travel all the way out to Pine Lake Cemetery. Aunt Ann and Uncle Bernard live on the shore of Pine Lake. There they use a sickle-bar mower hung from a small raft to mow lanes through the lily pads to their pier. They let me use their canoe. Sometimes I spend all afternoon paddling around looking for nesting birds. Now I ride and walk my bike along the narrow path through the woods. The morning is growing warm and there is no breeze yet so it is pleasant to amble along in the shade of the tall oaks and maples and beechnut trees. I watch out for the red squirrels who build the big nests of leaves and twigs high up in the trees. I can imitate their chatter pretty well and it is fun to call them out and see how far down the trunks they will come. I also watch for birds. Grandma Hooper, the jolly, round Grandma who taught me how to read, gave me an enormous bird book last Christmas. It is too heavy to carry around so I have to remember the bird's markings and look it up when I get home. This morning I do not see any unusual birds, just a red-headed woodpecker, a catbird, a cardinal, and a scarlet tanager. What I like to do is spy on them, find their nests, see what they eat and how they live. The path wanders through an ancient apple orchard. I push my way through the brambles and weeds and soon come to the old building that we call the boyscout house. This is a two story farmhouse that has been abandoned since the Great Depression, my Dad says. The house stands alone in a clearing among some of the tallest maples in the woods. One of the boyscout troops comes out from town for two weeks every summer and camps here. There is a well dug out front with a cast-iron pump mounted on rotten boards covering the hole. It has a handle as long as my arm. I pump it a few times to see if it still works: it makes a loud clang and squeak and hiss but no water comes out so I give up. It feels like the pump might fall through the floorboards any minute. I walk up the broken stairway and try the door. It's locked. That's no problem if I really want to get in; any bent nail would open that old lock. Peering through the dusty and cobwebbed window I see blue-striped mattresses scattered about the dirty floor. Nothing has changed. The stink of decay makes me lose interest. Now the path turns into an overgrown lane used mainly by fishermen who drive their cars out here. The land drops off steeply on my right and through the trees I can see the sunlight sparkle off the waves on the lake. A little further on I come to the playing field that had been bulldozed into the woods for the scouts. It is all gown over with sumacs, thistles, and milkweeds. Another hundred yards and there is the girlscout house, grey paint peeling in the forenoon sun, and then Orchard Avenue again. I pedal up the hill from the flats and ride into the drive at Uncle Gene's house. This is another old farmhouse, white, square and two-storied, with a basement dug by hand where you can see the saw and axe marks on the beams. All around the house are tall maple trees and from a limb of one of these trees hangs a rope swing and upon the swing I see my cousin Sarah. "Sarah Jane," I ask, "where's Jimmy?" "He's working." She grins at me. "Where've you been?" "I've been to Church. Where is Jimmy working?" Sarah is seven and a pest and she already has a bike of her own, which really makes me mad when I think of it because I had to wait until I was ten. The only good part of it is that she can't ride it without training wheels, and she can't ride it in the street, and it doesn't go very well in the gravel driveway. "Why do you go to Church on Monday? We don't have to." "I'm serving this week, if it's any of your business, now tell me where's Jimmy." "Well, I just don't know where Jimmy is, if it's any of your business." She starts swinging and then stands up on the seat to make it go higher, singing all the while, "Any of your business, any of your business." I ride off and leave her hollering at me. She's always like this. I round the corner at Garden Street and glide into the driveway, which, I should say, is concrete, and park my bike in the garage. Our house is located on the northeast corner of Orchard Avenue and Garden Street. The intersection is actually a "T" and across the road on the northwest corner is the Parson place, while on the south side is the old Gatewood house, one-half of a house, that is. Sometime past, they say, my Dad and Uncle Gene bought this old house down on Garden Street and planned to move it here. It was too big to move, however, so they sawed it in two and then moved one half of it here and the other half just down the road. They put in foundations and wells and boarded up the exposed walls. The buildings look kind of funny and you can still see where they would fit together again. This half they sold to Mr. and Mrs. Gatewood. They don't have any kids and they both work in town The other half down the road they sold to Mrs. March. She's a widow and she raises prize gladiolus in the back yard, next to our pond pasture. One time, when I was little, a runaway team and wagon couldn't be stopped at the end of Garden Street and they crashed right into that old half-a-house; I remember the man's bloody head and how Mom tried to make me stay indoors. Now Mr. Gatewood has put some large boulders out along the road and painted them white; every now and then somebody will run their car into them. Mr.. Parson had the same problem. People driving west on Orchard Avenue would miss the turn at Garden Street and plow into his front yard. One even hit the maple tree clear the around corner, so he put some boulders out on the edge of the road too. I stop to say hello to Lady who is really glad to see me and who wants out of the kennel; I give her a good scratch and then go around back to the kitchen door. As I enter I can hear Mom in the basement singing along with a tune on the radio as she does the Monday washing. I go through the kitchen and down the hall to my bedroom. First I put the cigarettes away in my junk drawer. I put away my good shirt and pants and shoes, then I put on my favorite black and white-striped shirt, blue-jeans, and high-top boots. I finish dressing by belting on my four-inch hunting knife. I go down the stairway into the basement and find Mom putting wet clothes through the wringer into the stationary tub. Her face is flushed and her hair is coming unpinned from the work and the damp. I sit on a stool at my workbench and watch her and I answer all the usual questions about the trip, the mass, and breakfast with Grandma. Once all the clothes are out of the washing machine, she drains the water out of it and loads the clothes back in; then she fills it up with water again, turns on the agitator, and puts on the lid. I know the whole routine and I could do it myself but she won't let me -- something about the wringer. Dad is the same way about the table saw. "Before I forget," she said, "Dad wants you to get busy on that nail project this afternoon." "Aw, Mom," I groan, "not today." "And another thing, while you're sitting there, you might as well clean up that workbench. It's a mess." My workbench is on this side of the basement at a right angle to the tub and the washing machine. Dad's workbench and Johnny's workbench are in the opposite corner of the basement, behind where the coal furnace used to be. That was a huge thing that sat in the middle of the basement. It had an iron door big enough to crawl into, and big sheet metal pipes radiated out across the ceiling. Now it is gone and we have a much smaller oil-burning furnace and the coal room now contains two hundred-gallon oil tanks instead of all that coal. Talk about a mess! That's what this basement used to be, with ash and clinker buckets spilling over and black dust all over everything. I study my workbench for a moment. It is cluttered with saws and screwdrivers, hammers and boards and bits of wood, candles, little carvings, hand puppets, and the remains of an electric train. Dad's tools always seem to end up on my bench. He says he can never find anything when he needs it. Johnny says the same thing. I see that the draw-knife he made from an old file has migrated over here. I take it and some other tools and carry them across the room and put them where they belong, then I return and rearrange things until there is some empty space in the middle of the bench. As I am pushing things around I hear the washing machine swishing and the radio singing and Mom talking to me. "Bobbie," she says with a pained expression, "you're not listening to me again. I said, if you haven't done your practicing yet, you'd better do it now. That looks much better." I plod up the stairs. I don't know why people are always saying that to me. How can I not be listening? I don't have a hearing-aid that I can turn off, which I don't dare say or even think very loud or it's big trouble. I wonder if it's a mortal sin or a venial sin, not listening. I go to the living-room and sit at the piano. Out of the window I see Tommy Parson playing with his dog in their front yard. I play the scale of C one time. There, scales are done. I listen for Mom, she's still in the basement. See, I'm listening. I play a little tune of my own, which I'm not supposed to do. No fooling around! Is that mortal or venial? I'm supposed to learn this "Italian Song" written by somebody named P. I. Tchaikovsky. I don't think you can pronounce a name like that. I pick through the piano bench and come up with "Glowworm" and play that instead. Then I watch Tommy for a while. I am stuck here for fifteen minutes every day. Every Saturday I ride my bike to Larry Turner's house for a lesson. He can play by ear. He is one of my brother's friends. He even helped us make hay this year; all those big boys throwing bales up onto the wagon, laughing and clowning around, and drinking a cold beer after every load. I got to drive the tractor in the field. I mean, I got to steer it, I can't quite manage the clutch yet. I don't know what I'm going to do for a piano teacher this fall when Larry goes to college; or, for that matter, what I'm going to do for a big brother when Johnny goes to college. I hear Mom coming up the stairs so I get busy with "Italian Song." First I play the part for the right hand, then the part for the left; I try to play with both hands but I can't quite get them together yet. I do it again. Sometimes, when nobody else is home, I'll stack up records on the record player and listen to them and sing along with them and pick out the tune on the piano. Last Christmas, Johnny gave two records to Mom and Dad, "Sheherazade" and "New World Symphony," and I play them over and over. I never heard music like that before. The music makes me feel like I'm out in the woods, or on the lake, and there is the quiet time before a thunderstorm and the robins are singing their rain song and then the storm comes with flashing light, crashing thunder, and sheets of rain, and then it's past and quiet and peaceful. I don't know why nobody else seems to like this music. I play the piece two more times and guess that I have been at it long enough so I leave the piano and go into the kitchen. Mom is at the counter fixing sandwiches and I see her glance up at the kitchen clock. "Can I go let Lady out, Mom?" "Just for a little while, Bobby," she replies, "after I finish hanging out this load of clothes we'll have lunch." I run around front and swing the gate closed, otherwise Lady would just run off. Lady is up and barking gleefully and she is all over me when I open the door to her kennel, forepaws on my shoulders, licking my face, and slobbering on my shirt. We run around the front lawn together and play touch and go in the shrubbery along the house. She likes to tumble and roll in the grass, tugging at my pantlegs and sleeves, growling dramatically. She never bites hard. There are two large apple trees in the backyard and a lilac hedge at the fence. I toss green apples up into the hedge for her to fetch; some she catches on the fly, others she will race after and stop, but never a one will she retrieve like she's supposed to. Pretty soon we are both panting under one of the apple trees and she flops down across my chest. The little wrens in the birdhouse overhead are fussing furiously at the disturbance. Mom comes out of the back door carrying a bushel-basket full of wet clothes and I struggle to get up to help her but Lady is pressing me down. I roll over and push up with arms and legs and Lady slips off. "You'd better put her away now, Bobby," Mom says. I catch her by the collar and she promptly sits, I tug and she twists and she slips the collar and runs toward the front yard. I go into the house and get a dog biscuit and put six more in my pocket. When I come out again Lady is waiting for me. I give her a biscuit and put her collar on and she very sedately leads me to the kennel, chewing. While she gets a drink of water, I hide the other six dog biscuits around the kennel and in the doghouse and then return to help Mom . Mom is complaining about Uncle Gene and for the first time I hear the tractor and sprayer off somewhere in the orchard. "It sounds like he's across the road," I say. '"Yes it does," she responds, "but just as soon as I leave for town he'll come up here and spray these trees and my clothes." I keep quiet, this argument is out of my league. She says the same thing every week and it never happens. We finish hanging the wash and then go in for lunch: peanut butter and strawberry jam and cottage cheese sandwiches, milk and ice cream. Then she goes to the bedroom to change. On Monday from one to two in the afternoon Mom is a spotter for the civil air patrol. They built a spotting tower downtown right next to the railroad depot, across from the courthouse. The tower is two stories tall, painted white, and it has a solid railing around the top platform. They go up there and sit with binoculars and try to identify any airplanes that fly over; their purpose is to detect a Communist sneak attack on the heart of America, six-hundred miles from the Atlantic. They even have an air raid siren. I went with her a couple of times and they gave me a pair of wings to pin on my jacket but there is really nothing to do except sit around and gossip. After I finish eating I go outdoors again, out through the back gate to the new concrete-block shed which houses garden tools, farm tools, firewood, and a big potbellied stove where we burn our garbage. I get a claw hammer and a nail puller and go over to the great pile of lumber under an adjacent apple tree. This is wood that was removed from Grandma's house during the reconstruction and it is my job to pull all eight million nails that were left in it. The boards are odd sizes, mostly about ten feet long, the width varying from six inches to a foot, The edges and surfaces are rough like they had never been planed. I set to work: flip a board over so the nails stick up, pound them down, flip the board again, pull out the nails and put them in an old coffee can. About half of the nails are bent so I have to pry them upright before I pound them down. There are always a few that will break off and I don't know what to do with them, and then there are the ones that get lost in the orchard grass and get me in trouble. I don't like this job at all, but Dad says this wood is native black walnut and that it's really valuable. I hear Mom calling me but I ignore her and pound away, louder. Pretty soon I hear the car start up and I pause and watch through the lilacs as Mom backs it out of the garage and rolls out onto Garden Street. I wait a few minutes to be sure she hasn't forgotten something. Reasonably certain that she isn't coming back, I leave the tools where they are and go back into the house to my bedroom. I get the old war-surplus gas-mask bag, put the cigarettes and some matches in it, then I take the book down from the shelf and put that in. I go to my brother's room and dig around in his dresser until I find his single shot derringer and some .22 shorts and his micro-binoculars. In the kitchen I get an apple and some crackers and a can of pop. Now I'm all set. I leave the yard through the side gate and cross the road to the lane that meanders through the young orchard. I pass between the maple grove and the red shed where we store the farm implements, turn left up a row of apple trees and stop at the corncrib. The maple tree branches are thick with leaves and they sweep the ground all around the perimeter of the grove except here, at the corncrib, where they have been cut back. Carefully I creep along the building and slip into the grove. It's like entering a living green church. Inside the light is dimmed and the tree trunks rise up like pillars. There is no orchard grass growing here, just a thick layer of leaves on the ground and an accumulation of large boulders. I sit down on one and quietly remove the little binoculars from the pouch. Presently I pick out two, no three, of the red squirrels high up in the trees. I have been observing this family for as long as I can remember. This spring there were five babies born in a hollow just low enough for me to climb up and look. So far two of them have disappeared. I can't discern whether the ones I see are young or old so I try calling them down. This produces a chattering behind me and I turn to see the grizzled male spiraling headfirst down the trunk with tail jerking and eyes glaring. He spies me, stops, and falls silent. Fooled again. The game is over so I rise and shuffle through the leaves and noisily part some branches on the other side to emerge once again on Orchard Avenue, directly across from Uncle Gene's. I cross the road again and go up the walk. Sarah is not in sight but I hear the television playing inside the house so I know where she is and I avoid her by going around back of the house. There I find Aunt Henrietta hanging out the wash. "Good afternoon, Aunt Henrietta," I say, careful to be polite because this Aunt can be very difficult, "could you tell me where to find Jimmy?" "How-do, Bobbie," she says, eyeing my bulging pouch, "going on a picnic? No? Well, Jimmy is helping his Dad with the spraying. Do you want something?" "No, thank you, Aunt Henrietta, that's okay, I just wondered." I move sort-of sideways down the gravel driveway and I can see that Aunt Henrietta has decided to forget the pouch and get on with her work. I walk past the apple-house, which is the heavily insulated building where we store the crop through the winter, and turn right at the big white chicken-coop. Now I can hear the sound of the tractor and sprayer coming from the direction of our house. Could it be they sprayed the laundry after all? I watch them drive toward me between the rows of trees. Jimmy is sitting on the left tractor fender, feet braced, holding the two-foot nozzle in both hands, directing the spray up into the branches, first on one side, then the other. Uncle Gene is driving, steering with his right hand because his left arm is in a plaster cast. He pulls up at the gasoline barrels next to the tall water tank. When the sprayer tank is aligned with the water tank, he stops and turns off the engine. Jimmy jumps down and turns off the sprayer engine. I leave my bag under the plum tree and join them. Uncle Gene climbs up on the sprayer tire and takes off the tank lid with his good hand and adjusts the three-inch downspout while Jimmy turns on the valve. Water gushes into the tank. "Hello there, Bobby," Uncle Gene is always friendly, "you're just in time to help us out. Tear open some of those sacks and hand them up." Uncle Gene tips the sacks over at the edge of the hole, grabs them at the bottom, and pours the yellow powder into the tank. The powder dust drifts up around us; it smells like a wooden match does when you first light it. Funny thing about this stuff is that it goes in yellow but it comes out white. The orange tractor and sprayer are coated white on top and both Uncle Gene and Jimmy look like somebody sprinkled them with flour. Jimmy is at the gasoline barrels filling a five-gallon can. The ground in front of the barrels is saturated with gasoline, hard packed and almost black; we often wash our hands in gasoline straight from the barrel. Jimmy picks up the can and carries it to the tractor and fills the tank. He is a lot stronger than I am, I couldn't lift a full can like that, but then he is a year older too. "Jimmy, are you going to get to play this afternoon?" "Naw, we'll be spraying until suppertime," he says proudly. "Maybe I'll see you afterwards." I step back to watch while Uncle Gene cranks the sprayer engine into life. The battery must be dead. He starts the tractor and they trundle off in the direction of Aunt Mary's house at the northern boundary of the orchard. I retrieve my bag and cut between the chicken-coops. I wade through a noisy white sea of yearling pullets; they squawk and flap and stumble over each other to get out of my path. At the granary, which is an old wooden boxcar set up on blocks, the geese charge out and chime in with their honking and hissing. The land slopes away here so that when I reach the barn I enter the hayloft on the second floor; I climb the ladder to the third floor to look for Elizabeth, my cat, and her kittens. I named her after Grandma. I search around among the bales but I cannot find them so I go back down the ladder all the way to the first floor where I look along the milking stalls and in the steer pen: Still no cats. Since we moved the cow and the steers to the pond pasture for the summer, the barn cats have become a lot wilder. I discover something new, however, which really pleases me. A pair of phoebes have built their nest on a cross beam just inside the dutch-door to the milking room. The nest is only about three inches in diameter and appears to be made of fine hairs and grasses all glued together somehow, and then stuck right to the side of the beam. It's just hanging there. I stand on an old bucket and peek inside, there are four little plain white eggs. I go out the door and there they are, perched on the top rail of the steer pen, tame as anything, and even as I stand there one of them darts past my head and settles on the nest. I watch for a while and then slowly walk away. This is a fine addition to the group of nests that I am going to look after this summer: the robins' nest in the maple tree in our front yard, the humming birds' nest in the crabapple tree, the turtledoves' nest in the sweet-cherry tree, and, of course, the wrens' nest in our back yard. I am still hunting for the crows' and the screech-owls' nests, I would really like to find them. I walk down through the pasture toward the lake. The hillside on my left is very steep and has dozens of parallel paths cut into it by generations of grazing cattle. We slide down this hill in the winter and every time we hit one of those paths we become airborne for a second; last winter we hit the milk cow with the toboggan and knocked her down and there for a minute we were really scared, but she got right up and walked away. When I reach the frog pond I stop and look up the slope at Aunt Mary's house. There is a rutted and washed-out path that is so steep I can't navigate it without using my hands; even so, they say that cousin Dick ran down that hill carrying a ladder, trying to save one of the Bernacchi boys who had fallen through the ice and drowned. There were three boys in that family and every winter for three years in a row one of them fell through the ice and drowned. I walk around the pond looking for frogs. Uncle Orville dug this small rectangular hole by hand, it's about twelve by twenty feet, and it was supposed to provide the family with froglegs, but no frogs ever got the idea. With the lake just a hundred feet away, why should they live here? Uncle Orville did another funny thing too, he built a wooden boat in his basement that was too big to get out. For all I know it's still there. I climb the fence in the north-east corner of the pasture and enter the woods. I follow the trail that leads around the hillside and down to the lake. The maples and oaks grow right to the water's edge and I walk along and look for muskrat burrows. Johnny traps muskrats in the winter and Dad says that he earned his money that way as a teenager, but I don't care much for the practice; in winter I go along and spring any traps that I find. Another hundred yards along I come to the aluminum rowboat that we landed here last week. Was that a day to remember! Jimmy and Sarah and I were walking along the path on the opposite shore when we came across this boat pulled up in the weeds. The oars were there and we couldn't resist. We pushed it into the water and started rowing toward the farm. The day was unsettled and there had already been a morning thundershower. When we were somewhere out there another thunderstorm rolled in. The wind blew so hard that waves broke into the boat. I wasn't strong enough to row so Jimmy did all the work while Sarah and I sat in the stern, crying and praying out loud. We were scared witless and when we touched the shore we jumped out of the boat and just stood there shivering. On the way home we made up a story to explain how we got soaking wet. Even Sarah didn't tell on us. I turn on a trail that leads away from the lake and winds through a group of massive concrete blocks shaped like pyramids with their tops cut off. Mature trees grow all around so it is difficult to imagine their purpose. I have seen a photograph that Dad made in 1919 that shows a large building here with a long, broad, wooden ramp leading all the way to the lake, it shows snow on the ground and no trees in view at all. It shows men leading teams of horses up that ramp, pulling sleds loaded with yard-square blocks of ice. The picture is labeled "The Ice House". Now nothing remains of it but these concrete foundation blocks amidst the tall trees. I walk over the brow of the hill and cross the lane that I rode my bike down this morning. I enter the woods on the other side. There are no trails here, this part of the woodland surrounds a swamp overgrown with willow thickets, a great place to watch birds and to find paw-prints in the mud. I pick my way through the tangled undergrowth down the slope to edge of the swamp and then I slowly work my way along to a small open patch of water. A gnarled and twisted oak stands there, shading the pool, its roots exposed from years of advancing and receding water and ice. It looks like some giant's throne. I sit down and empty out my bag. I place the little pistol and cartridges to one side. There are only two things I am afraid of when I'm prowling around by myself: feral dogs and town kids. I have been chased by the former and shot at by the latter; I feel safer when I have this little noise-maker with me. I open the pop and eat a couple of crackers, all the while scanning the willows for movement, but it is a hot afternoon and everybody is taking a siesta. On the far side of the pool is an oddly shaped stick standing among the curly-dock and cattails and I study it with the binoculars. It is a common bittern, its neck, head, and bill pointing straight up. I see the light reflect from his beady eye as he watches me. We'll see how long he can take it. I get out a cigarette and light up. I don't know why I like to smoke, there is just something about it. The last time I got a spanking was two years ago and it was about smoking. Jimmy and I had swiped some cigarettes and a bottle of beer from Uncle Henry when he brought his big grain truck to our wheat harvest. He caught us smoking and drinking in the wheat pile in the back of the truck. I don't know what he got so mad about. Anyway, Dad said don't you ever let me catch you smoking again and I haven't. I watch the bittern watch me while I smoke. I put the cigarette out in a bowl shaped depression in the roots and add it to the pile of butts that have accumulated there. I pick up the book and leaf through it and stop at the chapter "The Pond in Winter" and read about the ice cutters. The book is called Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau. I had the hardest time getting this book. I first learned about it in another book. Every winter Dad's service club sponsors a movie filmed and narrated by a naturalist. The films feature guided tours of national parks with an emphasis on the plants and animals which live there, plus there is always some footage of the animals who live on his home island in Wisconsin, tame porcupines and raccoons and deer. He also sells books, children's books. Well, last winter he had a new book that he said was for adults and when I tried to buy a copy he said I was too young and he wouldn't sell it to me. I got to look through one, however, and I read this part about a man named Thoreau who lived alone in the woods and wrote a book about it. That's the book I wanted. When I got home I wrote down his name. The next day, after school, I walked to the library and looked in the card catalog and searched among all the nature and outdoors books but I couldn't find it. They wouldn't let me go upstairs to look in the adult section. Then I went to the greeting card store, which is the only store in town that sells books, and looked through their single shelf of selections. The lady there tried to help me but I couldn't pronounce the name and I had forgotten how to spell it. So the following day I returned to the store with my slip of paper and the lady looked it up and found it and told me the title of the book. She couldn't pronounce his name either. She told me she would order the book only after I paid for it. I didn't like that idea very much but I did have the money. And a week later I had my book. I read Walden straight through. I have to admit that I don't understand all of what he writes, but I do understand what he is saying. I finish reading about the men sawing the ice and drink the rest of the pop. The bittern is still there, motionless. With the binoculars I check again to be sure that it is not a stick. I pack everything away in the bag and move around the tree, inspecting the ground as usual. About fifteen feet from the tree I spot a very clear pawprint in the mud. It is round with four toes and a heel and no claw marks. It has to be a cat. But the size is wrong, it must be two inches in diameter. As I watch, water is leaking into the track. I look all around but see no movement. I know from studying my brother's boyscout manual that this has to be a bobcat print and I know that it was here, stalking me, just a minute ago. What I didn't know is that there were any bobcats left in this part of the country. Very excited now, I look for more prints. If I were a cat, which way would I go to escape my mortal enemy? I imagine him sneaking up on me, curiosity aroused by some small sound, perhaps when I closed the book. Then he hears me pack up, smells me. He twists around and pussyfoots off the way he came. Now he is watching me, crouched down behind some log or tuft of grass, little stubby tail fluffed out and twitching back and forth. I purposefully walk away from the swamp for about a hundred yards, turn south and move quietly for another fifty yards, and then head back, on tiptoe. I can fool a barn cat like this, I don't know about a wild one. I stop every few feet to look and listen. Suddenly there he is, a leaping, tawny, blur of legs and fur, an instant of round, yellow eyes glancing back in astonishment, and he is gone. I listen to him bounding through the underbrush. I can't help smiling, I'll be seeing you, Mr. Bobcat. I see by the sun that the afternoon is getting on. If I am going to be the first one home, I'd better get moving. I tromp out of the woods, cross the lane, and angle across the overgrown playing field to the fencerow. I decide to detour around Uncle Gene's. I follow the fence to the road, cross the road, and climb the bank into the orchard. I walk through the orchard behind the screen of sumacs that line the road, come to the lane and the red shed, cross the road again, and so arrive at the side gate to our yard. I look in the mailbox. It is full. I take the mail into the house. I empty my bag and put everything back where it belongs and then go out to the pile of wood and get busy with the hammer and nail puller. And none too soon. Through the lilacs I see Mom pull into the driveway. I keep pounding while she unloads groceries from the car and goes into the house, then I drop the tools and go in myself. "Hello Bobby," Mom says, "have you been keeping busy this afternoon?" "Yes, Mom," I reply, "I've been working on the woodpile all afternoon. Did you spot any bombers today?" "No, we didn't see any planes at all." I go down in the basement and put on my milking pants. These are an old pair of Dad's pants with the legs cut off. They are much too big for me, they are stiff from ground-in dirt, crusted with dung, and emit the rich odor of the barn. Mom won't wash them, she doesn't want to foul the washing machine. She will throw them out when they get too ripe and I'll break in another pair. I put them on over my regular clothes and go upstairs. "I'll get the milking done before supper, Mom." I fetch the shiny steel bucket from the pantry, exit the house, and leave the yard by the side gate. I cross the road and walk down the lane past the red shed, turn right at the peach trees and pass between the wheat field and the hayfield, swinging my bucket and swatting the deerflies the buzz round and round my head. Bobolinks and meadowlarks rise out of the fields, sing their little tunes, and descend once more. The wheat is turning that yellow-gold color of ripeness, the fat heads of grain bending the stalks in sharp curves like candy canes; I break one off and shell out the seeds with one hand just the way my uncles do it and pop them in my mouth. They are still a bit soft, which means the moisture content is still too high to market the crop. This is a tricky time of year for the wheat and the oats because the stalks become more and more brittle as the grain ripens and a heavy rain can flatten whole acres. A summer hail storm can destroy the whole field. I know we will be harvesting within a couple of weeks and that's a cheery prospect. Uncle Henry will come with his big truck to drive the grain, and us kids, to the co-op elevators out by Pinhook. He'll tell stories in that loud, rusty voice of his. When we arrive we will have to wait in a long line of other trucks and tractors and wagons belonging to the other farmers and, while we're waiting, Uncle Henry will buy soda and ice-cream bars for us while he gets a beer for himself. I reach the lean-to shed built in the corner of the pasture amidst a grove of tall pin-cherry trees. I climb the fence and go around to the two cattle feeders. The cattle dribble some grain on the ground when they chew and there are always lots of birds around picking up the remains. The three steers are not in sight, so they must be up by the road, but the milk-cow is at the pond, getting a drink. I put the bucket down and go to the shed. It has a small room at one end for the feed barrels. The other end is boarded up on three sides and is open to the west. There is a small pen for trapping the steers when we want to move them to another pasture in the wagon. The cow doesn't need to ride in the wagon, she doesn't even need a rope on her halter; she will follow right along. When I was little, there were four milk cows and I can remember Johnny and Wayne driving them from the Armstrong hill pasture to the barn for milking. They didn't need ropes either. I go into the feed-room and scoop up the ground corn and cob mixture into an old bucket, then take it out and pour it in the feeders. I tap on the bucket to get Bessy's attention. I don't especially want the steers to come in until I am finished milking. As Bessie ambles up the path from the pond I lean on the fence and watch the bees coming and going from the two hives on the other side. Dad is teaching me how to take care of the bees. We dress up in long-sleeved shirts, screened bee-hats, and canvas gloves. Smoke makes the bees dopey so we put an old rag in the sheet-metal smoker and light it. When I squeeze the bellows, smoke squirts out the snout. I have helped replace the supers once so far. It is fascinating to watch the bees moving over the honeycombs inside the hive. I go over and give Bessie a hug and scratch her ears and talk to her. I get the stool and the bucket and begin milking. I hold the bucket between my knees, ready to move it if she starts to kick. She only kicks if she's sore or if I quit paying attention. In the summer it's easier because I talk to her. But in the winter I listen to the radio in the barn or I get distracted by the cats who sit in a semicircle and beg to get squirted, and then she nails me. Just knocking the bucket out from between my legs isn't so bad. I can usually catch it before the milk spills. But when it's really cold, that is, when it's so cold I have to use the blowtorch to make the water run, I cuddle up to her and she'll get her foot clear into the bucket before I can react. The same maneuver tips me into the muck, of course. I finish milking before the cow quits eating and I put the half-filled bucket on the roof of the shed. Standing on the roof myself, I call the steers in for their supper. Soon they emerge from the trees on the other side of the pond, trotting down the trail and bawling like they were starved. I don't pet and talk to these animals. They are half wild and I am half afraid of them. And I can't say that I will feel sorry for them when the autumn frosts arrive and we butcher one of them. While they are busy eating I carefully climb the fence and head for home. I walk up the path beside the hayfield. The red clover has already recovered from the recent cutting. When I pass under the purple-martin house, the birds go into frenzy of chattering and soaring and dive-bombing to drive me away. I set the milk bucket in the pantry and go down in the basement to remove my barn pants. Back in the pantry, I put a fresh filter in the funnel, place it in the pasteurizer, pour the milk in and turn the timer on. I rinse out the bucket and the funnel in the sink and put them away. I see that there are only a few bits of cowdung clinging to the filter as I throw it in the wastebasket. Better than usual. The buzzer sounds and I remove the pail of hot milk from the pasteurizer, pour it into a jar and put it in the refrigerator. I leave the pail in the sink to be washed. Mom is gone again, probably to pick up Dad at work, but I see that supper is on the stove. I go into my bedroom, get my book, and flop down on the bed to read. I awake with a start when the car door slams. I hear them come in the front door as I roll off the bed. No sense in catching it for lying around with my shoes on. Mom goes into the kitchen and I meet Dad coming down the hallway to their bedroom. "Hello Bobby," he says, "what do you know for sure today?" Every day he asks me that question and every day I mumble some inane response like, "Nothing." It's not that I don't understand the question. I have, in fact, thought up dozens of answers, any one of which would get me in big trouble. The problem is that I don't understand the reason for the question. Dad doesn't joke around, thus the question is serious. Yet it also seems pointless to me, like a joke. After all, what can anybody know for sure except that they are going to die someday? I go into the kitchen and get out the silverware to set the table. Mom is taking the wash off the line and folding the clothes into the basket. She brings the basket in and places it on the stairway to the attic where it will wait until tomorrow, Tuesday, ironing day. She returns to the kitchen and checks out everything on the stove and I finish setting out the plates and the glasses. Johnny has not yet come home from work. He works for the experimental department at the plant; they build and test prototypes of harvesting machinery. He often doesn't get home on time and that is just as well, as far as I'm concerned. In the last couple of years, suppertime has become a real pain. For some reason Mom comes down hard on Johnny for little, unimportant things. For instance, he lets the screen door slam whenever he goes in or out, and he leaves his dirty clothes on his bedroom floor, and he leaves the bathroom sink wet, and so on. Mom will say, I'm not your maid. Johnny always appears to ignore her when she calls him sloppy and lazy. Lately, however, she does something that puzzles me. When she places the bowls and platters of food on the table, she arranges all the serving spoons and forks so that they point at Johnny. As the food is passed around the table, if any silverware handle comes to rest aimed at Mom, she flies into a rage and twists all the handles away. Dad never says anything, but I can see the anger in his face. Johnny seems to ignore it all. It's getting so I don't want to eat supper with them at all because it makes my stomach hurt; one time I even threw up all the way from the kitchen to the bathroom. I don't mind if Johnny can't get home in time for supper. The trouble really started last summer. Johnny and his friends would play basketball out front in the evening. After a while, they would migrate to the cement-block shed in back and "mess around". I watched them cut open sticks of dynamite and pour the gunpowder into tobacco sacks. Then they melted down lead and nuts and bolts with the gasoline blowtorch and poured the molten metal into empty beer cans. They wouldn't tell me why they were doing this and I was sworn to secrecy. I couldn't figure it out until it was announced on the front page of the newspaper: "Vandals Explode War Memorial." On the bluff overlooking the swimming beach on Stone Lake, two war surplus cannons had been mounted on a stone and concrete pillar. One was pointed toward town, the other one pointed out over the lake; that is the one that somebody blew up. For a week the event remained an animated mystery in the press. Maybe it was part of a Communist plot. Then one of the boys told his parents and they were all in big trouble. I don't know what was said between Dad and Johnny. I know is that Johnny had to pay for his share of the damage and that the whole thing didn't seem to bother him much. With Mom it was different, however, it was like this incident confirmed some dire prediction never voiced. She questioned me privately day after day. Did I know what they were doing, was anybody else involved, how often had they fired that cannon? Indeed, that is what they had been doing, muzzle loading that old gun and setting it off with a lighted fuse. They were successful too, except that the final projectile got stuck in the barrel. Suppertime is bad for another reason, too. It is the question and answer hour. In the winter, it's do you have any homework, why is your grade in arithmetic so bad, where did your allowance go; in summertime, it's what did you do today, how did you get so dirty, when are you going to finish that job, and so on. Most days I am prepared with reasonable answers, but once in a while they will surprise me: how did you burn that hole in your shirt? Often they say they can always tell when I'm lying. I know that isn't true. Usually when I lie they believe me and sometimes when I am telling the truth, they think I'm lying. And then there are the times when I know I have been caught, there is no doubt whatever. They will not say a word until supper is on the table and I sit there with a full plate and burning steel knots in my stomach, awaiting my fate, and it usually begins with the gentle caveat: we're only doing this for your own good. I always break down and cry before they can get going. I don't know if they are gratified by the spectacle, but they usually relent at this point. It is a very good thing for all of us that mind-reading is not a common human talent. If they knew my thoughts during these trials, they would instantly revise their expectations for obedience and reform. Then they would try to make me eat. That was until the time I threw up all over, now they allow me to go to my room when the interrogation is completed and the punishment pronounced. Supper tonight is easy. Mom and Dad are engrossed in a discussion of who might be appointed to the position of general manager at the plant now that Mr. Lind has had a heart attack. Mom believes that Dad has a good chance, if his reputation at headquarters in Milwaukee hasn't suffered too much from his son's delinquency. Dad wonders how such an elevation in status would affect the family and Mom assures him that we will support him and not in any way interfere with his work or embarrass him with bad publicity. I agree. The meal is awful, dry and over-cooked slabs of beef liver, limp onions, and mushy vegetables, but the cherry pie and milk are good; I finish mine quickly and ask to be excused. I go to the pantry and pick up the dog's leash, then go to my room, dig out my cigarettes and put two into my shirt pocket along with the matches. At the kennel I snap the leash on Lady's collar and she drags me out the open gate and across the road to the hayfield, where I set her free. She races ahead, jumps and rolls in the clover, chases meadowlarks, grasshoppers, anything that moves, and I run along after her. When Lady hits the lane at the wheatfield, she turns left and begins weaving back and forth, sniffing the ground. She goes a few feet at a time, stops, burrows through the tall orchard grass and red clover growing wild at the margin of the hayfield, hunting for cottontail rabbits. At the end of the field, she chooses the fencerow between the wheat and the corn and runs along the furrow left from the spring planting. The corn is up about a foot and a half except in the spots where we had to replant, a job that Jimmy and Sarah and I got this year. The corn planter will skip every now and then and leave a gap in the row. After the other seeds have sprouted, we go along the rows and fill in the gaps by hand. The first one pokes a hole in the ground with a hoe handle, the second one drops in three kernels of corn, and the third one fills in the hole. Lady is way ahead of me. She is already at the edge of black-locust woods, and I run to catch up. I don't want her to go through the fence at the end of the field and onto the railroad tracks. I yell at her and she pauses to look back at me and then plunges into the woods. Dad disks a fire-break around the woods and I choose to follow it rather than struggle through the trees and windfalls with their long thorns. The tilled earth is soft underfoot and I leave deep footprints. I turn and study my own pigeon-toed trail, then I practice walking backwards to imitate it. This is really fun to do in the snow when we are playing hide-and-seek. I follow Lady's progress through the woods by the sound of her crashing through the underbrush. She is not a subtle hunter, or a successful one. I doubt whether she would know what to do with a rabbit if she caught one. That reminds me of the cottontails in winter, and as I stop to light a cigarette, I try to visualize the scene. It is a moonlit night, very still, and bitterly cold. The eerie laughter of screech owls drifts out of the orchard. The cottontails creep into the yard and dance around in a circle, now hopping on hind legs, rocking back and forth, jumping and kicking. I don't know why they do it. Lady emerges from the woods just as I turn the corner and I chase her to the oatfield and up the furrow toward the pasture, away from the tracks. All of the mighty pin-cherry trees and elms and whatever else grew in this fencerow were knocked over with a bulldozer and burned. I objected with tears and futile anger ,but it had to be done, Dad said. Too much of the land was going to waste. I had better luck protesting the hunting on the farm. I put a stop to a planned fox hunt, earning the sincere enmity of a neighbor and a few wondering remarks of some relatives. Lady is plopped down in the dust at the milking shed, tongue hanging out, grinning, she submits to the leash docilely and accompanies me home through the clover. I put Lady in her kennel and gather some mint leaves to chew. I see Johnny's new car parked in the gravel driveway behind the garage; Dad cut a door into the back wall so he could get the car in and out that way. I go into the kitchen and Johnny is there, eating his supper alone. "Hiya, Bobby," he says, "whatcha doin?" "Nothin," I pull out a chair and sit. "I got the milking done and I walked the dog. Where were you cutting today?" "Ugh, we're out 35 at the ordinance plant, cuttin for old man Nordine. First time nothin broke down." "Wish I could work on the hay crew," I say. "You will, someday, Bobby, when you're in high school. "That seems like a long way off." He laughs, "Well, it's about another six years, I guess. You stink, you know. Have you been smokin again?" I am embarrassed and look at my feet. I don' t know what to say. Johnny reaches in his shirt pocket and pulls out a pack of gum and hands it to me. "Here, you'd better chew one of these," he says. "Thanks," I mumble, putting a piece of the gum in my mouth, feeling very warm all of the sudden. "Are you going out tonight?" I ask. "I dunno," he says, "I might run over to four corners for a while, why?" "Just wondering," I say, "can I go along?" "S'okay by me if it's okay with them." He continues to shovel the warmed-over liver and onions into his mouth and he declares, "Say, this stuff is real good." I wince. Mom and Dad are sitting in the screened porch off the dining-room, still in earnest discussion, and I stand at the French-doors waiting for an opportunity to interrupt. The sun is setting and in the twilight the fireflies begin to flicker, tiny dots of light amidst the dark shapes of the shrubbery. The conversation falls away, Dad looks off across the fields, Mom fidgets with her dress, and I ask them if I can go out with Johnny. They both jump and Mom quickly says no. "No, Bobbie, you have to go to bed early so you can get up in the morning." Disappointed but not surprised, I return to the kitchen and sit with Johnny while he consumes a third of the cherry pie buried with ice-cream. "Can't go, huh!" he mumbles with his mouth full, "well, you can't have everything. I've got to go out to Henry's on Sunday and you can go with me then." He finishes the dessert and goes out through the dining room and the living room to his room in the front of the house. I remain sitting, staring at his dirty dishes. Presently I hear the screen door slam and his car start up. I remove his dishes to the sink and give them a quick wash and dry and put them away, then I wipe the table. No sense hearing about that too. I go to my room, take off my shoes and socks, get my book and curl up in the old, grey wing-backed chair and switch on the reading light. Thoreau is saying something here about the Catholic Church. He says that after going to Confession, men will not strive to improve themselves. I don't know about that, but it's a pretty bad thing to say. I underline it. Until recently, I thought everybody knew about Confession and Communion and Confirmation, yet when I told Mrs. May that I was going to be confirmed, she asked me what did I mean and even when I explained it, she couldn't understand. Dad passes through the hallway and pauses at my doorway, I close the book and look up. "Bedtime, Bobby," he says, "early day tomorrow." He looks like he would like to say more so I get up and put the book away, rapidly reviewing the events of the day for an obvious mistake, but he just goes on into their room. I take off my clothes and hang them in the closet, put on my pajamas, and go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I turn off the light and get into bed. Mom comes in and asks me if I said my prayers and I answer yes. She tucks me in and kisses me on the forehead and leaves. I lie there staring out of the window. This is the second worst time of day for me. My mind wanders, skipping over this and that, then the room starts to vibrate, everything shaking back and forth, I try to focus on the window sash and I can see clearly that it is not moving, but still the shaking goes on. I shut my eyes tight and the vibrating resolves into an inclined plane, gray and shadowy, with three dark stumps growing out of it, one nearby and two off in the distance. Then comes a light out of the gloom and it shines more and more brightly until it's all alone. It moves away from me, still shining brightly, it moves away, far, far away, and it beckons me. I sleep.

THE END