“I’ll be right back,” she had said, “and then I hope I can sleep.” She whispered this in his father’s ear; it was past midnight, and they were on their way home. They would have the whole train ride in the morning to talk and rest before returning to everyday life.

Frank trips and falls forward, one knee landing on a crosstie with a crack of pain that takes his breath, his palms outstretched into the gravel. “Please don’t be foolish,” Lil had said the day she came with him. “It’s dangerous, and it’s so hot.” He catches his breath, hearing her say, I told you not to do that. His pants are torn, his hands scraped, but he can bend his knee. He can stand, and he waits for the pain to subside, for his vision to clear. He can see a small house in the distance, the roof caving at one end, where there is a big satellite dish; he hears a dog barking and the distant roar of a muffler in need of repair.

He takes another deep breath, knee sore but okay, but he has to pee, so he looks around to a spot where the pines are thick, offering shade as well as relief. I went to the restroom, and it saved my life. And is it any surprise that Horace grew up to be a nephrologist? Every time the two have gotten together over the years, the conversation always comes back around to kidneys and their mother’s escape from death. “The kidneys should have been saved in one of those Egyptian jars!” Horace says. “The kidneys get more blood than the heart, brain, and liver. The kidneys, thanks of course to my presence, saved mother’s life.” And last year when Frank was in the hospital, complaining about all the tubes running in and out of his body, Horace had called from his place at Hilton Head and said, “Tapping a kidney’s not so bad, big brother.” Tapping a kidney. Horace said things like that, like he might still be at a fraternity party setting up a keg. “Tapping more than a kidney,” he almost said, but chose not to go there. He was tired of the chatter. He simply thanked him for calling and wished him a great time golfing or sailing or whatever it was he was doing. Catheters, catheters, heart, bladder, enough. Enough with the slow drain.