There was a little kitchen, a smaller bathroom, a bedroom with enough space for a mattress. In the living room there was an old oil stove. Windows in nearly every wall. The rest of their possessions were in heaps on the floor. Someone, probably Carlotta, had tacked carpets and Indian blankets to the walls.

“What do you think?”

“It looks great. Looks just like somebody’s house,” I said.

Sam put on a record. He waved his hands and talked fast.

“We’re going to divide the room into two parts. Move that big desk into the middle. Behind it, where the record player is, will be for relaxation and meditation. The other side is for work and study. We have good light for painting and reading. But the outdoors is the best part.”

He opened a glass door and stepped through green vines onto grass. The music from the record player poured from the open windows. The woods, mostly dark firs, were silent, and brushed up to the edge of the lawn.

“I’m going to have little plots of vegetables all over. Angelina ran off this morning and I had to go to the farm next door to find her. They’ve got this big garden in back of the house. Long straight rows of everything. Very neat and tidy, but not very interesting. So I thought I’d plant things as though they were flowers. Say, ‘Wouldn’t a cabbage look nice under the tree?’ and plant a cabbage. Just free in the grass, not with big dug-out plots around things. Maybe I’ll dig little holes and plant a few seeds just any old place. All over the lawn and in the trees. I won’t mark them or anything. The people at the farm have little sticks at the end of each row with the seed packages stuck on so they can tell what’s planted there. But my way, it will always be a nice surprise. I’ll be strolling along and see a plant and it will be a beet or a carrot. Be like an Indian brave going hunting. Come back from every walk with something good to eat. Maybe I’ll open all the seed packages and dump them together in a bowl so I don’t know which is what even when I plant them. That’d make it even more of a surprise when they come up.”

He walked slowly in the sun. The air smelled clean. The sound of drums came from the windows. Sam’s smile and the sun and the trees all mingled soft and easy together.

“You’d better not do that with your tomatoes,” I said. “Tomatoes take a lot of babying.”

I flinched at the word and looked at him to see if he knew yet.

“Is that so? What do you have to do?”