He stands. He tests his leg and finds it working. He leaves, scooping up the broken foils, walking the way anyone escaping from a thrashing and on his way to a scolding would walk. He doesn’t look to see if Johnny is about.

He’d hoped to delay Mother’s knowledge of the foils, but by the time he arrives, Johnny has already raced home and told the whole story. It seems that George triumphed. Johnny is quite elated by the whole thing. Victory to the Bully Boys!

But also embarrassed. “He just stands there and lets people hit him,” Edwin overhears him telling Rosalie. “The only fight he’ll ever win is a pretend one. And even then, he’ll only pretend to win it.

“When someone hits him, he cries!”

How amazed Edwin would be to know that as an old man, he will look back on these days with longing. My wonderful childhood, he’ll think. My short and wonderful childhood.

iii

Father arrives at last and in such an excellent mood that the decision not to tell him about the foils is mutually made without a word being spoken. He kisses the girls, returns to kiss them again. Little Joe is tossed into the air. He even helps carry the food to the table for dinner, doing an impression of a Negro servant that gives Asia the hiccoughs, she laughs so hard. The children stand behind their chairs until Father has taken his place.

Dinner with Father is a one-man show. His abhorrence of the theatrical life is much less persuasive than the glamour he casts with every word, every gesture. Tonight he tells tales of Sam Houston, the wild man of the frontiers, intimate of the Cherokee, hero of the battle of San Jacinto, governor, orator, and senator. Edwin looks across the table, hoping to catch Johnny’s eye. They’ve heard these tales so often—if there be nothing new, but that which is Hath been before—but Johnny doesn’t notice him and Edwin actually loves these old stories.

Sam Houston dressed like an Indian. Sam Houston’s near mortal wounds. Sam Houston’s broken heart. There are few men Father admires as much and once, long ago, Houston was his closest friend. Like himself, Father says, Houston has mind. He points to his own forehead.

He tells them how, in a fit of despair, Houston determined one day to do himself in. How his hand was stayed by the sudden appearance of an eagle. ‘‘‘A spirit messenger,’ is how the Cherokee tell it. Old Sam’s a great friend to the Indian—speaks the language fluently, which few white men can do. He even has a tribal name—Col-lon-neh. That means the Raven.” Father is wiping his plate clean with a piece of bread.