Another evening she queried him in detail about his father; wanting descriptions of how his father had aged, where they had lived, what Foster knew of his father’s history, his business and work. And of how his father had been with his mother; what Foster recalled of the two of them, as well as friends, the people his father worked with. And also again not so much how he died but what it was like after that: the funeral, the people there. What was said. Where his father was buried. What that place looked like. And Foster told her everything he could and in the telling discovered more than he thought he knew and it all came out of him, a swift rush of words that would not stop even as he ate up the piece of vinegar pie she had placed before him, a combination so sweet and delirious that he was actually stopped, choked off for some moments gazing at her across the table where she sat with her head down on her arms, before he realized she was sobbing. And he sat looking at the rind of piecrust on his plate, knowing better than to rise and go around to her. There was no comfort, there. None wanted.

After dark he would go to the barns with Pru while she made her last check of the livestock by lantern light. When she was done he’d stand in the yard and watch her cross to the house, the circle of light bobbing roughly over the lawn. Then he’d return to the barns to release his dogs and the three of them would go up the hill under the stars and what moon there was. The dogs ranging out, loping in the starlight. Most nights they would go high onto the ridge in the woods until the dogs were tired. Twice having to call Glow off the chittering of a raccoon and once running his legs sore and his voice hoarse as she ran after deer. But most nights they would just go up through the woods and circle back down into the empty sheep pasture, the ledges soft shadows in the night and come to sit in the small cemetery where beside his grandfather’s stone he’d nested a bottle of the bonded scotch whiskey and he’d sit cross-legged and take out a box of cigarettes and unscrew the whiskey and drink small sips and smoke. Considering his day.