The nephews begged, cajoled, wheedled their uncle and finally bribed him with their stash of penny candy. By his own admission, Major was a sucker for a sucker.

“Now tell us,” the boys demanded.

“Well,” Major said, carefully unwrapping a Tootsie roll. “She was sitting on the porch with Nalle. And I sat down by her and lit a cigarette, gave her a smile and said, ‘Well, my dear, Doc Jensen’s eating a big dish of crow tonight.’ Jensen was the one who couldn’t shut up about how she’d never have another baby. Anyway, Ingrid didn’t blink an eye or turn a hair as she said, ‘That quack can kiss my ass.’”

“Tell it to Sweeney,” Minor cried. “She did not.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kennet said, trying to shape his mother’s voice around the words. It was like trying to put a coat on a snake.

“Sure as I’m sitting here,” Major said around the bulge of chocolate in his teeth. “Swearing and slang in one sentence. Telling you, pals, I laughed so hard, I fell off the porch.” He jabbed the two fingers holding his cigarette at the boys. “Marry a dame like that, hear me? One who doesn’t take bushwa from anyone. A dame who surprises you when you least expect it.”

Ingrid thumbed her nose at the doctors and easily had another baby in 1929, a boy they named Emil, whom everyone called Little. Then came the Crash, and life got very different in Clayton. Not right away. The Crash happened in October (an event young Nalle took literally, spending weeks looking for pieces of whatever thing had crashed), after the Thousand Islands’ season had ended and the hotels and summer homes closed up. Nothing seemed terribly amiss that winter and spring. But then summer came and the closed hotels on the islands didn’t open again. People didn’t return to their cottages. Kennet, who was eleven in 1930, became aware of a growing sense of unease among the adults in his world. His parents looked grim as they went over their ledgers and papers. No amount of candy could get the worry out of Major’s face. In the Fisher Hotel, more and more rooms stood empty and idle, and there was less mail for Kennet to sort into pigeonholes. Trains rolled through Clayton and only a few travelers stepped from the passenger cars, but dozens of rumpled, disheveled men hopped furtively from the freight cars and gathered around the depot, looking for work, for food, for anything.