“And why not? Tucker Caliban has made us chase up and down the countryside trying to find out what makes him tick.” He shook his head. “This is truly remarkable, a miracle.”

We climbed up and over the Ridge, and in the orange dusk light, far off down the hill and across the river, we could see the city, from this distance seeming just as it had always been, blissful, carefree.

I had last summer sorted out now, and told him, finishing with my surprise that my father had ever sold Tucker the land and farm in the first place.

Reverend Bradshaw smiled to himself. “Men do strange things sometimes, Mister Willson, especially of our—your father’s and my—generation. Don’t forget, we came along in a time when people were truly idealistic, when discontentment with the existing order of society caused us to break the pattern of our lives, break patterns our ancestors, our parents, had formed for us.”

I started to laugh. “My father? My father. If you knew him, you’d know better.”

“I do know him,” he stated flatly. I turned to him astonished.

“You know him?”

He smiled at me this time. “No need to be alarmed, Mister Willson. I know him as I know them all. All of the boys, now men, all of us who grew up with the Depression, cut our teeth on the Spanish Civil War, and flirted with Dame Communism. Some of us even married her. Others married, then divorced her and could never really fall in love again.” His eyes went dull, far away, as if he could not only remember but see and feel those days.

“Not my father!” I broke in on his memories.

He turned to me. “Men, I still maintain, do strange things when weaned in strange times.”

“Not my father.” I repeated softer this time, then laughed because I sounded like an echo.

Reverend Bradshaw didn’t laugh. “You shall discover many a strange thing about your father as you grow older.” He smiled again, but it was more a leer.