The high school had a community service rule: You had to do fifteen hours each year. Graff, the school media specialist, had organized Saturday Group through the church, but you could get community service credit whether you had anything to do with the church or not. Saturday Group did one-shot stuff: serving at a soup kitchen in Bridgeport, taking inner-city kids from Hartford on a river expedition, working on park restoration in New Haven. Austin had done everything. He liked how you put in your eight hours and you drove home feeling good and slept at night knowing you had done your share. He was way over his hours requirement. Several guys at school had approached him on the subject of buying his volunteer time, but nobody had figured out how to accomplish this.

“Good Shepherd?” repeated his grandfather. “No, Austin, I think not. Fifty years ago it was a beautiful building in a beautiful city, but there has been too much demographic change. Terrible neighborhood. Drug- and crime-ridden. I do not want you there.”

“Grandfather, nothing’s going to happen.”

“Correct, because you are not going.”

Austin knew by now that arguing did not work with Henry Fent. But he could often tease his way out. So he said, “What about all that weight lifting you and I have been doing?”

“Some use that will be against drug dealers’ guns.”

“I won’t be standing on the corner buying crack, Grandfather. I’ll be in the church basement slapping paint on the walls.”

“These people should maintain their buildings,” said Grandmother. “That’s the kind of population there now. People who let things go.”

“But I’m the Paint Wizard,” said Austin. “Two coats from my paintbrush, and those walls will stand forever.”

The neighbors gathered on the sand. It was cloudy. No moon, no stars, no comet. The wind was high and waves sloshed without rhythm, smashing against hidden rocks in the shallow cove.

Austin was wearing a heavy canvas jacket with fleece lining. It had great pockets. He usually kept a Swiss Army knife in one; wallet zipped inside another; pen, Post-its, all that school stuff in a third. He liked the weight and the safety of his possessions in pockets. Tonight he had only the knife.

The wood for the bonfire seemed to form a tiny shelter for some little kid to hide in. When he was little, Austin had liked hiding. There was no trunk, closet or cabinet bottom where he could not curl up. Once he’d stuffed himself into his dad’s golf bag.

It made him feel good to have a happy kid memory. Actually, most of his kid memories were happy, and it chewed him up that his parents did not put more value on the happy memories the three of them shared.