…

With so many Testaments to give away, we’d left town by eleven. Our first stop proved disappointingly close to Falls. Pop visited a desk clerk proud of his two card tables’ jigsaw puzzles: mostly Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, either coming or going, and of absolutely no interest to me.

So I explored behind the Whispering Pines Deep Sleep Cabins. I had a feeling I would find some major cluelike event. Today’s agitation came partly from the hurt eye, partly from my fear of Monday’s far-worse schoolyard charges, names I could neither explain nor ever quite deny. I dreaded our teacher’s panic every time I said four nice words toward Berta Dix, or when I’d once handed her a small red dime-store valentine.

Most of what I knew was this: I, Clyde M. Delman, Jr., did not want to be anybody else or anybody else’s son.

I would find a way to prove and stay it, this, his.

Behind the cabins proper, I came upon an older couple. They were kneeling in high grass beside something. It rested on a pillowcase. I drew nearer. One small spotted brown-and-white terrier. Its front legs stretched out, its dried black lips drew back. (The pillow slip spelled WHISP. PINES ETC, maybe to cut down on embroidery’s expense.)

“Uh-oh. Look, a boy,” the old woman nudged her stooped husband.

“It’s okay, Shirley. Sonny, come see what all’s gone wrong here. You have quite the shiner. Bet the other guy looks way worse. But come see what a mess we’ve got, and still so far to Florida. Wouldn’t have had it happen away from home like this, not for any amount, but who’s in control? Do they ask us? No, sir, they do not so much as check, just do it. Then you got to deal with the results. Smartest dog ever. And now here she is, finished. Trixie knew thirty tricks.”

“More,” his wife added, but deferred by lowering her voice.

“More, sure, maybe more. Our daughter give us Trix. Our girl’s a gym teacher in Toledo.”

“Physical-education supervisor for the whole Twelfth District,” the wife corrected.

“Like he cares about Betty Jean’s title! … Son, we’d best bury her here. The heat’s getting so bad we’re not likely to take Trix in the car, not for long. My wife wants we should try fitting her in our drink cooler.—But if we do leave Trixie, and if we was to make a grave marker, will you, as the son of the place, keep your eye on her? Cut back the weeds and just, you know, KNOW she’s here? Because that’d sure make us feel it’s not so far to Florida. It’d be like Shirl and me had left our Trix with somebody. For instance, I would say, ‘Trixie, would you rather be a dead dog or Vice-President Nixon?’ and she’d keel right over, legs up, and I mean she’d stay. Got many a chuckle on that one in our travels, ’m I right, Momma?”