“Gigantic Mayflower moving van; took up the whole damn street just about. And your mother down there shoveling away with a vengeance. Hours she was down there. Her and that ‘Kitty,’ piling stuff up; throwing things around. I never saw her work so hard. And singing! The two of them. Singing away like it was Mardi Gras or something. All the junk he’d collected his whole life probably. Old photographs of cattle, train magazines, busted guitars, quarter horse trophies; all of it totally ruined and warped outta shape. I kept looking down from the kitchen window. I could see the whole fandango from up there. They didn’t know I was watching them. Those movers kept loading box after box of that junk onto the van. They couldn’t believe she wanted to actually ship that crap halfway across America. I remember them loading that old buffalo rug of his. Must’ve weighed as much as the bull it came off of; all dripping with rainwater and smelling like the Wild West.” The old man laughs and stretches his newly trimmed toes. He looks down at them, examining the evenness of the cuts. “Well, at least your mother had a sense of humor. That’s one thing we can say about her.” The boy stays silent. He turns his head slowly toward the little bay window and stares out at the shining magnolia. He can see bees swarming around the sweet ripe blooms. The grandfather watches him now and has a sudden feeling he’s not sure of; a sickening feeling high up in his stomach. It reminds him of the nausea of past losses; past aloneness. Women leaving. Him leaving women. A parade of beauties. All gone. Thank God he was over that. He would like more than anything to protect his grandson from that kind of desolation. He’s too young yet to fall in there. He speaks to the boy now with new vigor, trying to make his voice sound like a brand-new day: “Anyhow, what I was thinking was—we could certainly use some help here around the place. You know—dishes, floors, a little dusting maybe. Place hasn’t been dusted for months, looks like.”

“I dusted a week ago,” the boy says as he crosses to the hallway closet and returns with a broom and dustpan and starts sweeping up the nail clippings around the old man’s feet.

“You did?”

“Yeah, I dusted all the bookcases and the mantel.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be doing that. You haven’t got time what with your job and everything.”

“It’s all right.”

“I mean, you don’t get back home here until supper and by that time you’re all played out from loading hay and sacks of feed.”

“I don’t mind.”

“No, you shouldn’t be doing that kinda work. Housework. That’s not for you. Besides, I kinda miss a woman’s touch around the place, don’t you?”