In fact, on a glorious June day like this, John can almost forget, even, that these last couple of weeks have put his gut on edge. No letters from the boys. News that the Germans have again made a push toward Paris and at long last the Americans have been getting into some heavy fighting. News that the Marines have been involved in the heaviest of it, along the Marne. They’re in the middle of it, in fact, and have been for two weeks or more, and John knows from the newspapers it’s in a small place called Belleau Wood. His boys are almost undoubtedly there, though Wilma maintains the hope that they have become separated from their brigade, or that their particular regiment or company has been held back in the rear. John doubts that this is true.

But a June day like this makes a man happy just to be alive, making good money, married to a good woman, father of four extraordinary children. True, Wilma has been on edge lately, despite that he’s kept the newspapers away from her, has told her only the bare minimum; she’s developed a bit of a twitch, of her lip, at times. At least she can laugh about it, a small, skittering laugh. Saying, “Just think of it as a smile!” And true, Wilma and John have both been having trouble sleeping; he encountered her at three-thirty this morning when he went downstairs for a glass of milk. One small lamp shining on the work in her hands, she was sitting in the living room knitting, needles clicking, and she looked up with frightened eyes when she heard his footsteps. Almost before he recognized the motion of her face as one of her incorrigible twitches, she had turned it into a small (if fluctuating) smile. Neither spoke; he crossed to her and kissed her forehead and walked on into the kitchen, the clicking of her needles following him like a pack of yippy dogs nipping at his heels.

But on a June day like this—who can worry at all? In fact, John, sitting in the meeting with Odell and Hal, finds himself recalling his childhood: rambling down by the waterfront, fishing on Green Bay, lost in his own boy world, when entire afternoons could center on the capture of a dime-size brown toad, the perfecting of a duck call using a blade of grass.

John is half listening to Hal’s numbers, and half thinking about buying a new fishing pole, when his son Harry bursts into the conference room. Harry, fifteen, growing taller by the day, his handsome face now white as one of the puffy clouds floating across the sky this beautiful day.

“Dad!” Harry yelps, interrupting Hal. All three bankers regard him with surprise, indignation.

“Dad, you’d better come home. We got a telegram. It’s Chase.”