Cal high-fived me and said, “Bam!”

Maggie said, “You guys suck.”

Cal and Maggie stayed out on the porch and played with some ephemeral social media app that put animated special-effects filters on their faces and voices while Sid and I went inside to do the dishes.

Sid and I had developed a system over the years. Sid washed, and I dried and put everything away. He was old-school about it, filling the sink with water and dishwashing liquid, putting on his rubber gloves, and scrubbing everything by hand with a two-sided, yellow-and-green sponge. Something about the slow, meticulous way he worked always felt artful to me and made me think October would have appreciated his ability to be present, patient, and fully committed to the task.

Sid was elbows-deep in sudsy water, scouring the pan Maggie had used to make the cornbread, when he said, “That’s a good friend you’ve got out there. Came a long way to extend the olive branch.”

“Interesting you say that, considering what my face looks like,” I joked. “I guess sometimes you have to beat your friends with the olive branch.”

“You know what I mean.”

I did, and I nodded. “I’m glad you got to meet him.”

“I like him very much. He’s quite a character.”

Sid turned on the water, rinsed the soap off the pan, and handed it to me. “Who’s going to help me with the dishes when you leave?” He turned off the water and pulled the drain stop out of the sink. “Certainly not Maggie,” he chuckled.

I dried the pan and put it back in the drawer under the stove. “What makes you think I’m leaving?”

Sid pulled off his gloves and folded them neatly over the chrome faucet. Then he glanced at me and said, “Come on. Don’t make me kick you out now.”

I stacked the plates that I’d already dried in the pine hutch to my right and turned my head slightly to catch Sid’s expression. The rise of his mustache told me he was smiling a little; the way his lower lip quivered told me he was trying not to.

“And Joe,” he said, “sooner is better than later.”

It was midnight when Cal and I got back to my cabin, and we didn’t see any reason to sleep, given that we had to be in the car by 4:30 to get Cal to the airport on time. I made a pot of coffee, and we went for the guitars. Naturally, I picked the Martin and Cal grabbed the Silvertone. He told me he’d been struggling for months with a song and wanted me to help him figure it out. Though when we got down to it, it came to light that it wasn’t yet a song. It was a vibe. A feeling. A sonic conversation Cal said he could hear in his head like a foreign language he didn’t understand.

“I need a translator,” he told me.

I asked him to give me a few adjectives to describe the sound he was looking for, and I laughed as he paced around the room in that swanky Western shirt, black sparkle guitar hanging like a rifle over his shoulder, Cowgirl Coffee mug in hand.