Right now, Heath couldn’t see anything too exciting about either activity, but he took it on faith that someday he might.

He finished the round only three shots behind Kevin, which wasn’t bad, considering his own twelve handicap. They turned in their carts, and then the six of them headed into the clubhouse’s private room for lunch. It was a dingy space with cheap paneling, battered tables, and what Kevin insisted were the best cheese-burgers in the county. After a couple of bites, Heath found himself agreeing.

They were enjoying replaying their round when, out of nowhere, Darnell decided he had to spoil it. “It’s time to talk about our book,” he said. “Did everybody read it like you was supposed to?”

Heath nodded along with the rest of them. Last week Annabelle had left him a message with the title of the novel all the men were supposed to read, the story of a group of mountain climbers. Heath didn’t get to read for pleasure much anymore, and he’d enjoyed having an excuse. When he’d been a kid, the public library had been his refuge, but once he’d hit high school, he’d gotten wrapped up in the demands of working two jobs, playing football, and studying for the straight As that would put the Beau Vista Trailer Park behind him forever. Reading for fun had gone by the wayside, along with a lot of other simple pleasures.

Darnell rested an arm on the table. “Anybody want to start the ball rolling?”

There was a long silence.

“I liked it,” Dan finally said.

“Me, too,” Kevin offered.

Webster held up his hand to order another Coke. “It was pretty interesting.”

They stared at one another.

“Good plot,” Ron said.

An even longer silence fell.

Kevin made some accordion folds in a straw wrapper. Ron messed with the saltshaker. Webster looked around for his Coke. Darnell tried again. “What did you think about the way the men reacted to their first night on the mountain?”

“Pretty interesting.”

“It was okay.”

Darnell took his literature seriously, and storm clouds were gathering in his eyes. He shot Heath a menacing look. “You got anything to say?”

Heath set down his burger. “Combining adventure, irony, and unabashed sentimentality is always tricky to pull off, especially in a novel with such a strong central conceit. We ask ourselves, where is the conflict? Man v. nature, man v. man, man versus himself? A fairly complex exploration of our modern sense of disconnection. Bleak undertones, comic high notes. It worked for me.”

That cracked ’em all up. Even Darnell.

Finally, they quieted down. Webster got his Coke, Dan found a fresh bottle of ketchup, and the discussion turned right back to where everybody except Darnell wanted it to be.

Football.

After lunch, the book club took a walk around the campground and continued their discussion of the biographies of the famous women they’d read. Annabelle had dug into both Katharine Graham’s and Mary Kay Ash’s books. Phoebe had concentrated on Eleanor Roosevelt, Charmaine on Josephine Baker, Krystal on Coco Chanel. Janine had read several biographies of cancer survivors, and Sharon had explored the life of Frida Kahlo. Molly, predictably, had chosen Beatrix Potter. As they talked, they related the women’s lives to their own, looked for common themes, and examined each woman’s survival skills.