As they reached the top of the hill the woods ended abruptly and the main part of Hook’s farm stretched out before them, some three hundred acres of rolling pasture and hayfields, with his house and farm buildings lying among an island of trees almost in the center of the cleared expanse. Back on the other side of the blacktop, beyond the kindred strip of woods there, he owned a similar piece of ground, only twice as large. And two miles east, toward the town of Banner Hill, was the hundred acres he had bought from Strickler, flat rich land he planted to corn to fatten whatever cattle he did not sell to other feeders around the state. It was a large operation, one of the few big farms in the area, and it was almost wholly his own creation. When he had taken it over from his grandfather fifteen years before, there had been just the old one-hundred-sixty-acre nucleus, the house and barn and a small herd of pampered unproductive Jersey cows the old man kept because the high butterfat content of their milk consistently won him prizes at the county fair, if not much of a living. The new buildings, the added land, the three-hundred-head beef herd were all his own doing, with the help of Uncle Arnie and Bobby and especially Chris, who daily after school and each summer had worked like a man, or even better, like a man who cared. So there was no part of the farm, no fence or field or animal or building or piece of equipment, nothing the limousine drove past on the gravel road to the farmhouse now that did not carry with it, in Hook’s mind, the image of his son.

They entered the island of trees and came to a stop at the house. There were already a few cars parked alongside the drive, transportation for the ladies of the Bethel Baptist Church Philathea Class, friends of his Aunt Marian here to “help the family,” which meant serve the mourners all the cakes and casseroles and sandwiches and salads the ladies had brought with them in the first place. Yet Hook was not ungrateful for their effort. Nor did it bother him that some of the women would be in an almost festive mood, that as far as they were concerned one church function was pretty much like another, a social gathering, a time for fun and gossip. He could accept this, did not expect humanity to suspend its grossness for even this one special day. But he wanted desperately to be by himself now, just him and the children, or ideally just him alone, if Bobby and Jennifer felt anything as he did, aching for privacy, wanting to put his suffering beyond the reach of another’s eyes.

As Rohmer opened the car door and they got out, Hook gently herded the children and Aunt Marian and Arnie into the house ahead of him. Inside, a half-dozen Philathea ladies were standing about the food-burdened dining room table like sentries at attention, and in uniform too, all with the same tightly curled blue-rinsed gray hair and the same soft stout bodies stuffed into rigid girdles and Sunday dresses off the half-size rack in Sears. Aunt Marian went straight to them, crooning over the food, accepting their embraces, returning them with a vengeance. But all Hook could do was nod to the ladies as he and the children moved through the dining room into the new part of the house, which contained their bedrooms and the family room. Jenny pushed ahead, running to her room and falling onto her bed. Following her in, Hook sat down next to her and put his hand on her head, on her long blond hair. Bobby, coming in too, stood inside the door looking down at the two of them.