Jamie came halfway to the table fast and then stopped. Looked at the boy, the grin on his face still there but apprehension flared up in his eyes. Recalled the first time he took the boy swimming, Jamie on his back at the riverbend: holding the child over him and then lowering him slowly onto his chest, the boy kicking and squealing. Terror and delight and then abrupt absorbed silence as the water came up cold around him as he lay prone on his father’s chest. That same boy now watching him. Some fear in his eyes. A sprawl of a boy. Jamie cut his eyes away and went to the stove and poured out a cup of coffee he didn’t want. Drank some of it and set the cup down on the cooling ledge of the stove. He said, “Whatever your plan is today, I want it quiet. I need to sleep.”

“Sure.”

Jamie tipped his head, cracking his neck. He said, “Jesus.”

“You all right?”

“I’m tired is all.”

Foster stood and took up his dishes and passed his father to the sink. Began to wash up. Without looking he spoke. “Anything I can do?”

“Just let me sleep.”

“Beyond that?”

There was a long pause. Foster got the plate and cup and cutlery washed and rinsed and then scrubbed out the skillet with clean water and put it back on the range to dry. Feeling his father behind him, the strength and tension of him a magnet to turn to, to resist.

After a time Jamie spoke. “No. Nothing but that.”

Jamie woke in the long lowering summer twilight, not sure of where he was. For those first few seconds thought he was a boy on the farm in Randolph, time to rise and help with morning chores. His body rolled effortlessly as a child and he came up on an elbow but there was no window where there should be a window and then he was all back. And then groaned. Thinking of the night behind him and the night ahead. Wondered how many nights it would take to prove him right. And felt a twinge of fear turn over inside, wondering if he was too old for this.

He bathed and dressed and, shaving, could smell and hear dinner being made down the hall, his boy talking to the dogs as he worked. He paused then, his face half swathed in lather, the razor cutting broad clearings through it. He was young enough. Those fuckers. The man in the mirror had bright unwavering eyes. Foster’s laugh came to him. He smiled at the sound.

Calves’ liver with onions and bacon. Black-seeded Simpson lettuce dressed with cider vinegar. Bread-and-butter corn. A bowl of radishes and scallions. He liked a scallion dredged with salt. The corn was first of the season, sweet, bursting with milky pulp.

He said, “What’d you do with your day?”

“Helped Floods put up hay this noon. Washed the chaff off me at the river. Read some.”