Jack brought him a plate and a glass. “Here you are, sir.”
His father said, “It’s always ‘sir,’ isn’t it? Never Papa. Or Dad. Some of the others call me Dad now, some of the boys do.”
“It’s a habit, I suppose. Do you mind?”
“Oh no, Jack, I don’t mind! Call me whatever you like! It’s just so good to hear your voice. To hear your voice in this house again. It’s just wonderful. If I could tell your mother, she’d never believe me.” He took Jack’s hand and stroked it.
Jack said, “Thank you, sir. It’s good to be here.”
And his father said, “Oh yes. Well, I hope so. That’s another matter entirely, isn’t it. Yes, it is.” He patted Jack’s hand and released it. “There’s not much I can do about it. That’s how it is.” He said, “I know Glory got her feelings hurt something terrible. Terrible.” He shook his head.
Jack looked at her, almost as if he had just learned something about her that was not perfectly obvious. Or maybe it was to see her reaction, to confirm his sense of things. How should she react? Her father understood much more than his happiness could abide with, and he was very old.
“I’ll start supper,” she said.
THE NEXT MORNING JACK WAS OUT IN THE GARDEN EARLY, cutting back weeds and spading up the soil. The old prairie came back the minute a spot of ground fell into neglect. Suddenly there would be weeds head high, gaunt shafts of plants with masses of tiny flowers on them, dusty lavender, droning with bees. And there would be black-eyed Susan, and nettles and milkweed and jewelweed and brambles and some avid vine that wilted in sunlight and broke at the slightest touch, leaving tiny whiskers of thorn in the hand that touched it. The roots they put down were deep and tough. It was miserable work to get them up. And here was Jack outside in the new morning light wrestling weeds out of the ground for all the world as if something depended on it. Glory made a pot of coffee and carried a cup of it out to him.
“I am working up an appetite,” he said. “Today I will eat. Tonight I will sleep.” He stood the spade in the ground and sipped the coffee. “Excellent. Thank you.” They saw the little Ames boy in the road, walking along with his friend Tobias, the two of them elaborating a tale or a joke of some sort, to judge by the laughter. Robby saw them and shouted, “Hey, Mr. Boughton!”
Jack said, “I guess that’s me.” He handed her the cup and walked down to the foot of the garden. He said, “Whatcha got there, kiddo? Is that a baseball?”
“No,” he said, holding it up. “It’s just a ball.”
Jack said, “Close enough. Chuck it here.”
The boy threw the ball a few feet into the garden. Jack dropped down on one knee in the dirt and scooped it up, and made as if to fire it back to him, then lobbed it gently into the road. The boys laughed. Tobias said, “My turn. Let me throw it this time.” And again, the ball fell into the garden. Jack picked it up, then drew himself up sidelong, formal as a matador, held the ball to his chest in both hands, and sited at Tobias along his shoulder. The boys giggled. Jack lifted his foot—“The windup, the pitch”—and lobbed the ball into the road. They laughed and stamped and shouted, “Do that again!” and threw him the ball, but he tossed it back and said, “Sorry, gentlemen. Another time. There is work to be done.”
Tobias said, “Are you his cousin?” and Robby said, “I already told you he isn’t my cousin!” and the two of them said goodbye and went off down the road, talking and laughing.
Jack watched them. “They seem like good kids. Nice kids.” Then he brushed at the dirt on his pant leg. “I really shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
Glory thought, That strange and particular grace a man’s body seems never to forget. Scooping up grounders and throwing sidearm. When her brothers were at home, even Jack would play baseball. That may have been why they were all so taken up with it. Even Jack could be drawn into arguments about records and statistics. He would sit around the radio with the rest of them to listen to the games. And sometimes when he played on a team he would make a beautiful catch or lay down a perfect bunt, exactly sufficient to circumstance as he never was elsewhere, and there would be a general happiness that included him, for a little while at least. She had forgotten all that.
She said, “It’s good of you to clear this out. I had more or less decided to let it go back to nature.” He had even cleared the weeds out of the place by the fence where gourds reseeded themselves year after year.
“Well,” he said, “at least now it will be a lot easier for the birds to find the strawberries.” He had always had a kind of hectic high-spiritedness that came over him when he ought to have been sad, and there it was, the strange old glitter in his eyes, the old brusqueness in his manner. What could have made him sad? He brushed again at the smudge on his knee and shrugged and said, “‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’”
“But you do need some work clothes.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Bib overalls. I have always admired
