I knocked too hard. A black maid in pink uniform finally unlatched the door. She stood looking toward the height of an adult, and when her head fell down my way, she appeared shocked and made her mouth move sideways then go click-cluck, “Who you looking, little lost bird?”

“Berta.”

“What bidness you got with any Berta, chip off the block?”

“Jography.”

Just then someone stepped up behind her, asking who it was, and the door flew open, almost hitting me. Mrs. Dix, legs bandaged and appearing fairly well used up, took one look at me then leaned against the doorjamb. It was how she stared at me, with that black woman lingering—mumbly confidential—right over her shoulder like trying to comfort but seeming to enjoy the latest twist of a whole new mess here.

Suddenly, lower even than me, past the white door’s enameled edge, three blond faces that were my face when young, shot around wood and brass; they peered out at their own sober face grown sadly older. That did it.

“Tell Berta … somebody came by about tonight’s hard homework. I’ll just get the isthmus-delta notes from somebody lives closer.”

“Who you?” the maid asked. But I turned away, walked fast. I had not spoken gentle Clyde Delman, Sr.’s name. What if I someway got HIM in trouble?

Near passing farmhouses, the blooms of fruit trees were just opening. Some still showed how, in bud, each blossom had been pink; but once unlocked all shone the same translucent white.

Dad and I now headed lazy to the last and easiest of today’s stops. We had forever, time, nothing but. He’d said so. He slumped dreamy in his thoughts about a Son-sacrificing God, one I did not credit, having never seen. I’d lately grouchily wondered why our church’s trademark wasn’t something prettier and more hopeful. Like, say, a rose? What does it tell you when your Club’s mascot (and whole meaning) is one skinny nude dead carpenter still pincushioned with bullies’ nails?

I now pointed to my own blacked eye so fast and hard I nearly jabbed my finger in the cornea; I hurt it half on purpose. That way I wouldn’t fail or stop.

“See this big ole shiner, Dad?”

“Is that your question you were working up to?” He laughed. A wonderful spiraling kind of sucked-in chortle my Clyde had. (If I could redo one thing I’ve risked in life, I’d retract my next request and all it took out with it. I might have made him notice those frothy white blooms or three distant mules or some pond-fishing red-haired farm kids. I could have made my sharp yellow pencil press deeper into the spongy lined pad, bearing down upon our Owner’s Manual; I might’ve written out several of Clyde’s own jokes, then read them aloud to him. The generous guy would have given me full credit and slapped his knee with joy, and literally not known those jokes were his. But I did not do this. So …)