“Floods can’t get their own hay up?”

“I know you can’t stand em. But that Andy’s all right. He’s a pal. It all gets shunt onto him anyway. So I was just helping him out, really.”

“I bet old man Flood loves to see you over there busting your butt.”

“Then I took the Chrysler to Bethlehem.”

“That right? Took the car to town? Just like that?”

“Somebody had to shop. It was either that or wake you before the store closed. Way you looked this morning, I’d not of been surprised you slept straight on till morning.”

“So you went to the store and came home.”

“I wasn’t out sporting around.” But did detour slowly down through the late dusty afternoon streets to pass the Beebie house and looped the block to pass by again all without sign of the blond-bobbed Judith. The answer, however you looked at it, wasn’t a lie.

Jamie shrugged then and said, “You’re old enough to want to get out and about. We’ll have to work something out, times I know you’ll be able to use the car.”

Quiet a moment. Then Foster said, “I’d like that.”

“Boy oh boy, that corn’s some awful good, isn’t it?”

“There’s more to the sink, I can drop in the pot you want.”

“No, this is good, this is enough.”

Then both quiet, busy with the food. And for Jamie, those moments recalled to him the many days he and Joey would sleep until late afternoon and rise then to begin the night, another lifetime but one that still ran threads through him and one big strand sitting across from him, and for those moments he was calm and easy, a simple partition of grace from the rest of time. And so he finished his meal, buoyant, confident of the night’s work before him. He smoked and tilted back in his chair and looked at his boy. Foster sitting watching him back. The puppy Glow working the room, back and forth between the two, waiting silent for them to notice her starvation.

Jamie said, “What would you say, we quit all this and tried something else. Someplace else.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking, maybe we should cut out of here. Things aren’t what they used to be.”

“See there.” Foster grinned. “I told you you were getting old.”

“You’re happy?”

“Happy enough.” Then, “What were you thinking of?”

“I don’t know. Out west somewheres maybe. New Mexico.”

“Live with the red Indians?”

Jamie smiled back at him. “California?”

“Be in the pictures.”

“Sure. You could do it.”

“It’s handsome fellas they’re looking for, I hear.”

“Most likely they always need somebody to stand around and make a crowd.”

“Not my fault I’m so much taller than you.”

“Point.”

A pause. Then Foster said, “You’re halfway serious, aren’t you?”

“Well. You’re about grown. Maybe a change of scenery would do you good.”

A longer pause. Then Foster said, “What’s going on?”