“How did you hurt your face, Doug? You look like you’re going to have a shiner around that eye. You didn’t smack a chair, did you?”

“I got kicked.”

“Bad luck,” said Seamus. “Who kicked you? We’ll get him on the team.”

“Hiram.”

“Hmn. Hiram was an excellent ball carrier at one time, but he’s too frail for contact sports now.” These words were followed by silence between us, respectful contemplation of the sage man’s gridiron days, I suppose. Finally Seamus announced, “We’re all going to grow old and die.”

Why bring this up at dinner? I asked my brother, “Do you feel you’ve lived a good life so far? I mean, if your time came, if you had a terminal illness, or fell from a height, do you think you would feel proud of the things you’ve said and done?”

“Yes,” he announced, then appeared to deliberate. “And also no. Kind of yes and no. Same as everybody.”

I stayed quiet. After another moment Seamus said something I could not make out above raucous dining noises. This racket of men eating was made louder by the acoustic properties of the room. The high ceiling vaults throw echoes in every direction. It can be difficult, when forks and knives are ringing out against plates, to determine direction and proximity of sounds, especially voices, which seem to bubble up for an instant, excitedly declare something unqualified by any context—“I know everything there is to know about the rotator cuff!” I heard one exclaim, and another asked, “Seriously, though, what did Maxwell mean when he said, ‘The God is above us’?”—then recede again into the muddle and roar, our party in full swing.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Seamus.

“What?” the man asked.

“That echo?”

We listened, but the sound—it was the hushed noise of someone crying, softly, softly—had faded. Seamus said, “See if you can get in three sets of twenty wind sprints before Sunday’s game, Doug.”

“Will do.”