The deleterious effects of cholesterol were unknown in those days, and eggs were fairly sensible nutrition. But Jack did not come into full glory until he broke from his osteopath’s guidebook and, all on his own, discovered nature’s true miracle food—the peach. He ate peaches morning, noon, and night. Illinois peaches were small, hard, and sour. Jack admitted as much, but ate them anyway. In an astounding burst of industry he planted hybrid peach trees and hybrid apple trees. He cultivated mulberry, pear, and sour-cherry trees. He revived the long-neglected grapevines that grew alongside my grandfather’s old Chevrolet garage, which, by then, my grandmother had rented out to a German machinist. Jack was constantly pruning trees, watering them, fertilizing them, and splicing hybrid branches on them like artificial limbs. But Jack refused to cut the grass; that job was left to Cousin Eustace, a head-injury victim.

There were a lot of birds when the fruit got ripe. Buffmeir killed flocks of crows and blackbirds with his shotgun (Oyster would finish off the wounded with a few quick snaps of the neck). Buffmeir would let me collect the bird bodies in a cardboard box, on the outside of which he would tally his kills before we tossed the dead birds into the trash burner. I was always being told that there were hungry people in the world, but I grew up in a store and all I ever saw was food. I had the good fortune to be born after the trees had matured. Jack had worked these trees back to vigor. For me, they were just there for easy picking. The only tree tree on the property was an oak that had gotten the jump on Jack—it was there in manifested maturity before he could do anything about it.