Leo walked along the breakdown bed of Paper Boulevard. The sky had been clear and blue, but now that he was out of downtown a huge cloud bank moved in and in its shadow Leo could see red in the asphalt. He figured the rain would come from the north because the wind was carrying the smell of the paper mill with it; Ryder said it was a natural wood smell that’s been turned inside out and so leaves your nose as insulted as your eyes would be if you saw that done to a kitten or a little girl. That’s how he described it and he wrote a song about it called “The Inside-Out Low-Down Paper Mill Blues.” But it wasn’t a blues number at all. It sounded like one of those Pete Seeger or Kingston Trio songs. Ryder’s harp still sounded gut-bucket true, but it didn’t match his singing too well. Really, only Jim could pull that off, it seemed. To sing Negro songs without sounding like a fake.

The rain came just as Leo started down Saunders Hill. He held his hammer and apron and ran the rest of the way. Ryder’s white Impala was parked alongside the pines. Leo didn’t see his father’s car anywhere. Jim was inside though, sitting at the kitchen table with a can of Pabst in front of him and a full iced coffee too. Ryder stood at the counter dicing an onion with a paring knife, and he wore Jim’s soiled white apron around his waist.

“Hey Young Buddy, how’s the carpentry business? Chick Donovan treating you all right?”

“You know Chick?”

“Ride knows everybody, didn’t you know that?” Jim sipped from his beer can, then lowered it fast to the table. Ryder smiled and scraped the onion chunks off the cutting board into a bowl of hamburger meat and raw egg.

“’Scuse me, Mr. Bunyan. Grab me another, please.”

“You really want one, pop?”

“How’s that?”

“Do you really think you need one?”

“That’s the strangest question I ever heard.”

Leo pulled a can from the fridge. He saw two more untouched six-packs on the bottom rack, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father drunk.

“Grab one for yourself, Johnny Bunyan.”

Leo did. He didn’t really want one. He didn’t want to be hazy for his harp lesson with Ryder, but Jim had never let him so much as sip a beer before, even on Wednesday nights, just Coke, so Leo set his nail apron on the floor in the corner and sat down at the table with his beer.

Ryder asked Jim where the salt was. Jim didn’t answer. He was looking right at Leo, his forearms resting heavily on the table, his shoulders hunched up to his ears.

“The salt, Jim. Where is it?”

“Above the toaster,” Leo said. He took a long sip off his beer and watched Ryder add salt to the meat loaf. He wondered how Jim could have gotten this far so fast after work. The beer was ice cold, though, and tasted wonderful.