Four days later he sat and walked and stood through the service and burial as if asleep although he’d not slept more than a handful of hours since his father’s death. The minister spoke words that he did not understand and that had nothing to do with his father. He sat alone in the front pew because that was where they put him. Left alone, he would’ve sat at the back. The number of people there surprised him, although he recognized most of them. When somebody spoke to him he answered them back but would later not recall a single word said. It was hot at the afternoon burial, the sun splintering off the polished wood box as it sank down into the hole. Somebody handed him a spade and he set to work until someone else took the spade away from him and he understood he wasn’t expected to finish the job, just start it. It seemed to him they ought to have left him alone to do it. It seemed to him it was his job to do. Afterward there was food that people had brought that the minister’s wife laid out in a room behind the church but he went in and saw the people standing and eating and talking to each other and he went back out. It was no place for him. Outside Patrick Jackson was squatted on his heels in the small shade of the Chrysler and Foster was not surprised to see him.

Jackson said, “People need to do it. They need to honor the dead but then they got to get on with things. It always seemed to me to be too fast but I never could figure out what would be the right amount of time. What would you do? Still, I can’t see eating a ham sandwich.”

“No sir.”

“You have any trouble, down there by the river?”

“No sir.”

“You all right then?”

“My father’s dead.”

“I know it,” Jackson said. “Mine too.”

Two mornings later a Littleton attorney called Ewert Morse drove in and if he was surprised or alarmed to find Foster seated on the steps with a shotgun laid across his knees he did not show it. He wore a finely woven straw Panama and sweated mildly in the morning sun. He had with him the deed to the property and explained to Foster that two years before his father had changed the deed so it was in Foster’s name. The deed was on heavy paper folded three times and tied with a ribbon. Morse opened it to show him.

“What do I have to do with it?”

“Do with it? Why you don’t have to do anything. It’s just, it’s yours.”

“What do I owe you for bringing it out here?”

Morse shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. It’s part of the service that your father already paid for.”