“No, hitchhike. Everybody hitchhikes these days.”

“I don’t.”

“Come on, you know what I mean.”

“Okay, you’d hitchhike.”

“And I’d take my pack and sleeping bag. I’d get along.”

“When would you go? And how long?”

“This fall sometime. And as long as it takes.”

Hook smiled ruefully. “You’d freeze your butt off, you know. Even down South and out in California it can get pretty cold in the winter, especially at night.”

“Not like here.”

“Here there’s a roof over your head.”

Now Chris looked serious, determined. “I can do it.”

Watching him, Hook lit a cigarette. “I know you can, son. I’m not doubting that. It’s just that it’s all still pretty new. I want time to think about it.”

Chris shook his head despairingly. “You still think I’m a kid, don’t you?”

Hook did not answer immediately. He had an idea what the boy was getting at. “You mean you’ll go no matter what I say.”

Chris met his gaze for a few moments and then he turned away, looking out through the screens at the sleeping cattle. He nodded solemnly. “I’m afraid so.”

“Then I guess you’d better go with my blessing.”

Chris looked surprised for a moment. Then he smiled. “That’d be better.”

“I think so too.”

“It’s just something I have to do, Dad. I’ve been thinking about it all summer.”

Hook tried to appear enthusiastic. “Be good for you, I guess—getting away for a while, on your own.”

“There’s just so much going on in the country right now,” the boy said. “And I feel like, you know, like we’re kind of out of it here. Like there’s a flood all around us and we’re sitting up here on our hill all nice and dry looking down on the poor slobs who are losing everything or trying to save something. You know what I mean?”

Hook drained the last of his can of beer. It was warm. “High and dry,” he said. “Not a bad place to be during a flood.”

Chris would not accept that. “Come on, Dad. You know what I mean.”

Hook allowed that he did.

Chris was silent for a while then, sitting back against the parapet that surrounded the porch. Finally he said, “You could’ve been just about anything you wanted.”

“Hardly.”

“But you chose this.”

“You sorry I did?”

Chris looked out into the darkness, the swarming night. “No, I love it here. I really do. Most of the kids, they can’t wait to split and never come back. But I want to someday. I really do. After service and college and maybe knocking around a while. I can’t see a desk job for me. I love the farm, and the cattle, and being out all the time. I guess I’m crazy. And I hope Bobby stays too.”

Hook said nothing. His son casually had filled the vessel of his life to overflowing and he did not trust his voice to shape a word. He got to his feet, starting for bed, and gave Chris an equally casual clap on the shoulder, because that was the American way.