They stood near the back steps, Dewey staring up at Tucker, who was looking around the yard, scowling. “Can’t learn to ride here; ain’t enough room. You’ll knock down every bush in sight and get us in trouble. Come on.” He kicked up the stand, grasped the handle bars, and began to wheel the bicycle toward the gravel driveway.

“Where we going?” Dewey scurried after him. He was a little angry that Tucker rather than himself was wheeling his bicycle.

“Come on now. We ain’t got no time to talk.”

They went a half mile north of Sutton to a place just off the Highway where someone had started to build a restaurant but had never finished, had completed only a parking lot, a huge open black space sprouting with several concrete pillars.

By now it was almost dark; the sun had dropped without notice behind the tall trees on their side of the road. Tucker wheeled the bicycle up to one corner of the lot and stopped. “You remember what I told you before?”

“I think so.” He was not sure. Tucker could see it.

“All right, now listen.” He recited the lesson in a high-pitched monotone. “You can’t balance too good when you’re going slow, better when you going fast. But when you going fast you got to remember to steer. It’s real easy if you just keep your head. Can you do it?”

“I think so.”

“All right. Get on and I’ll hold it for you and run alongside, pushing. I’ll tell you when I’m letting go. All right?”

“I think so.”

Tucker helped him up on the new seat. Dewey put his feet on the pedals. Tucker looked at them. “I told you and told you—don’t never ride no bike in no sneakers. Your feet’ll slip and you’ll hurt yourself.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t much you can do about it now.” Tucker sighed. “Well, let’s try it.”

Dewey squirmed on the seat, and Tucker began to push him along. “Now keep your balance. Get the feel of them two wheels. Don’t be scared. And don’t oversteer.”

The handle bars jerked like the horns of a wild bull. Dewey turned to Tucker.

“I’m letting go now.” He did and almost immediately Dewey wobbled from the straight course and Tucker had to catch him just before he crashed into one of the concrete posts. They tried again, and again: Tucker running beside him, breathing hard, coughing now and then; Dewey sitting, not knowing what to do, but trying hard to do something. He wanted to cry, but did not want Tucker to see; that would have made him more ashamed of himself than he was already.

Dusk hung now on the hills; the wind was rising. They had tried countless times.

“We best go on home, Dewey-boy.”

“Please, Tucker, just once more. Please.”