“They’re both good boys. And yes, you’re right—Will is more like your family. And please don’t cut down our old tree. That tree is…part of the family. That tree looks like I feel, sometimes.”

“It’s old, Lorrie. Bark’s full of beetles. It’s fallin’ apart. It’s a danger. One of them widow-makers falls on a kid someday, then you’ll be sorry. Ain’t I right? What’s more there’s near as much brains in my side of the family as ever there was in yours. Just because we hain’t throwed off any bank clerks or schoolteachers yet don’t mean the Lightcaps ain’t as smart as anybody. Smarter’n most. Like my Daddy used to say, one man’s as good as the next—if not a damn sight better.”

“All right, Joe, all right. They’re both good boys. All I meant was Henry is—quicker.”

“You mean smarter. Maybe he is. But Will is doggeder. I mean that Will is a dogged son of a gun. I like that in a boy, that doggone doggedness. He lends a hand, grabs a root and hangs on. Like a badger. I sure do like that in a boy.”

“All right, Joe, you’re right. They’re both ours.”

“You mean shut up and go to sleep.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Goddamnit, Lorrie—” Joe felt his black temper rise, instantly. He choked it off, changed the subject. “Should cut that tree down.” The autumn wind brushed the shoulders of the farmhouse, prying at the clapboards, lifting at the eaves, trying the asphalt shingling on the roof; the wind pushed the big limb of the hemlock back and forth, bumping on the outer wall.

“I love that tree,” she said. “I love the sound of it touching the house. Please don’t cut it down.”

“Okay, honey. Just that big limb. I’ll leave the tree stand.” His huge rough hand caressed her bare shoulder. “Just for you, Lorrie.”

“Joe, please…” For he was turning upon her now, his powerful arms pinning her down, one hard thigh sprawled across her legs. “I’m not ready…” she said.

“We never was,” he said.

I CAN SEE HER, my five-foot four-inch one-hundred-pound mother, walking up the road under the autumn arcade of flaming sugar maple trees. She walks fast, briskly, with big strides for so small a body, head high and eyes up as she watches the blaze of October colors. She carries a light willow stick and swings it like a boy. She wears an old sweater, darned and patched, a man’s sweater that comes below her hips, an ankle-length homemade dress, a red bandana tied around her head.

She was a beautiful woman despite four babies and two miscarriages in the space of ten years (those ravished years of her youth); she had fine flaxen hair that fell to the small of her back when she let it down; we loved to watch as she washed her hair. She had bright hazel eyes, widely spaced—sign of intelligence—a thin fragile-looking little hen’s beak of a nose and a narrow but expressive mouth trembling most of the time on the verge of laughter. Or of grief.