“Tonight is my turn to be the storyteller,” I said. “Father, what would you like to hear?”

He made a weak gesture that could have meant anything, and I plunged recklessly into the first thing that came to mind. It happened to be one that I had read during the summer when we had visited our cousins in Bolton Landing, and I had chanced on a book of stories by Mark Twain.

I recited the opening chapters of Tom Sawyer for almost an hour, until my father and Tim were both asleep. Then I turned on my side and cried.

In the morning, my father was cold and still. We would not believe that he was gone, but nothing we could do would bring him back. Tim went a little crazy and ran yelling into the woods. It was only when I had covered my father with the blankets that I could coax Tim back. It took us most of the day to hack out a shallow grave, using the axe and canoe paddle. Then I had to strike Tim in the face to force him to help me roll my father into it. We covered him softly with the fresh earth, both of us crying, for I had decided that we must take both blankets and so there was nothing to keep the dirt out of his unprotected eyes. Tim was useless at the grave, so I finished there while he piled the gear carelessly into the canoe. We shoved father’s revolver down to the bottom of the pack and just as the sun touched the treetops pushed off downstream. There were words that I remembered from the Bible. I suppose I could have said them over my father, but I was so angry over the senselessness and injustice of what had happened that I wanted to curse God instead. I did not, because, secretly, I guess, I was afraid of what He might do in return.

TWO

The Cabin