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“Let me grab my coat,” I said.

That afternoon we agreed that the problem with the truck wasn't carburetor or valves.

“Gas line,” he said.

“Gasket,” I offered.

Ellen Smallfeet fixed lunch for us. It was simple and good: fried fish, canned green beans, fresh-baked bread—and she sat and visited with us for a bit before cleaning up.

“I saw your son at the Pizza Hut the other night,” Phillip said, watching for my reaction. “Your older son. He brought us our food.”

I nodded, and then when the silence became tangible, I asked, “How did he look?”

“A little tired,” Phillip said. “Like he's not sleeping so good. But he made a couple jokes. Us Indians love a good sense of humor, you know.”

“Tired, huh? He used to sleep all day long.”

“He told me he took a day job at some welding place. Working in a big tin building without any heat.”

“Well,” I said. “That explains the letter jacket. It's the warmest coat he's got.”

“What explains what?” he asked, so I told him about the day before.

“Sorry,” he said, his dark eyes solemn. “You miss him?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I wish I could do it all over. Everything. I said some things to him that I really shouldn't have.”

“Words are like arrows,” Ellen Smallfeet called from the sink without turning around. “Once sent they cannot be called back.”

“That advice doesn't help me much now, Mrs. Smallfeet,” I said, in what I hoped was a proper tone of deference.

She turned around and covered her mouth with her fingers, looking for all the world like a wrinkled, giggling three-year-old. “Sorry,” she said. “When one reaches my age, it is sometimes difficult to turn off the wisdom.”

“I forgive you,” I said. “Thanks for lunch.”

“We'll take you into town in a bit, Grandmother,” Phillip said. “We've got to go to the parts store and order a new fuel filter.”

“Head gasket,” I said.

“I'll be ready,” she said, settling into one of Phillip's chairs, her hands crossed primly in her lap. “Whenever you are.”

We dropped her off and then stopped by the parts place. We ordered both parts.

Phillip took me back to my house, where I faced a more challenging task. Michelle and I sat down with Lauren as she was reading for school. Michelle looked at me and cleared her throat.

“Ah,” I began, raising my eyes to take in the hairless pectorals of one of Lauren's poster boys. “Your mother and I were thinking it might be a good time to talk to you about, ah, boys. And girls.” I could feel a warm flush creeping up my neck. “Sex. You know. Would you, ah, like to talk about that?”

“Uh, no,” Lauren said, not looking up from her science book.

“Just checking,” Michelle said, although she said it with substantial relief. “You sure you don't have any questions you want to ask us?”

Lauren gave a little exhalation of exasperation, tilted her head slightly to one side, and rolled her eyes. “If we talk about sex, you're just going to get embarrassed,” she said, and looking up at me said, “Especially you, Dad. And besides, I know everything I need to know.” She met our gaze. “Secondhand, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Well,” Michelle said. “I'm glad we had this little talk. Aren't you, John?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Very glad.”

“Me, too,” Lauren said, turning the page. “Could I finish doing my homework now?”

“Sure,” Michelle said.

“Absolutely,” I said.

Back in the hallway, we exchanged relieved high fives, and I hopped back to the kitchen table. “Hey,” I said, shuffling through the afternoon mail. “Would it be okay if we invite Phillip for Thanksgiving dinner? Indians do celebrate Thanksgiving, right?”

“Well, if Phillip's going to be here, why don't we invite Carla?”

Her tone was innocent enough, but I asked anyway. “What are you thinking?”

She looked away as she talked, and her voice took on a nonchalant tone. “I was just thinking that since Carla and I have talked once or twice about Phillip, and you said Phillip had asked about Carla, that maybe we should give them a chance to get to know each other better.”

I shook my head. “He's not ready for something like that,” I said. “You'll embarrass him.”

“Not at all.” She raised her hand—I swear on this Bible. “I know how sensitive he is. We'll invite some other folks so it won't be so obvious.”

It didn't feel right, but I couldn't think of a reason not to. “Okay,” I said. “I'll ask him tonight.”

Shortly thereafter Phillip finished chores and knocked on the back door, and Michelle invited him into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. When she had him comfortable, she asked him, “Do Indians celebrate Thanksgiving?”

“Sure,” he said, taking a sip. “We're a thankful people. It's Columbus Day Indians are not so crazy about.”

“I thought maybe because of the Pilgrims …” Michelle began, and shrugged.

Phillip smiled. “I think there are worse things than remembering that Indians are necessary for people's survival.”

“Good point,” I said. “You want to come for Thanksgiving dinner? We're having some other folks out. You wouldn't be any burden at all.”

“I don't know,” he said. “What kind of people?”

“Well,” I said, “some people from school. Michelle's parents. The Graywolfs. Not a big group. And they're nice.”

He sipped his coffee thoughtfully.

“John does most of the cooking, so the food is good,” Michelle added. “He bastes a mean turkey.”

“All right,” he said, setting his cup down. “Thanks.”

“Our first games are next weekend,” I said. “You can help keep me calm.”

“Good luck,” Michelle said, bending to pull the meat loaf out of the oven. “He's been tossing and turning for weeks.” She smiled sweetly at me. “I'm sure it's because of basketball.”

The smile I gave in return was somewhere between sickly and ghastly. It was true that I had lost a lot of sleep. With my bad ankle, it was almost impossible to get comfortable; I was forever kicking something and yelping with pain, and I was in so much pain that I couldn't even tolerate the weight of a sheet on my foot.

But it was also true that I couldn't seem to stop thinking about Samantha, wondering what she was doing, where our talk might lead. I couldn't stop imagining her, also alone in bed, also, maybe, thinking about me.

“Things should calm down when I establish some kind of pattern,” I said, shaking those images out of my head.

“Do you need any help with the varsity this week?” Phillip asked. “I can come up if you need me. I think we've gotten as far with the car as we can without that new gas line.”

“Head gasket,” I said. “You're always welcome,” I said. “Carla and I could probably use you. We're getting ready for that tournament in Calumet.”

“Maybe I'll do that,” he said, and Michelle and I exchanged a quick confirming glance as he left.

After Watonga had lost its final football game in the same dismal fashion in which it had lost most of the others, Michelle, Lauren, and I stopped in at the Four Corners convenience store to return
Black Beauty
and maybe check out something romantic. “Something with sinuous bodies coiled around each other,” Michelle whispered in my ear, her arm around my waist while I hopped, crutchless, toward the store. Maybe she was hoping to revive my libido; I had not showed much interest in her lately. Or maybe she wanted to live vicariously. I didn't ask.

“What are you talking about?” Lauren asked, holding the door open for us.

“Nothing,” I said. “Go away.”

Gloria was behind the counter, so while Michelle sifted through what videos remained late on a Friday night, I went over to talk. “How are you feeling?”

She looked a little pale, but her smile in return was genuine. “Awful,” she said. “Is being pregnant like this for everyone?”

“Well, I don't know about everyone,” I said, leaning on the counter and inclining my head toward Michelle, who was holding a video in each hand as though she were weighing them, “but she was sick as a dog every time.”

“Michael says—” she began and then broke off, her smile dying at something in my face. “I'm sorry.” She fumbled for something on the counter before looking back up at me. “He said he ran into you the other day.”

“I don't think he expected to,” I said, my voice even.

“No. He didn't.”

“If he'd known I was going to be there, he wouldn't have come.” Now it was less even.

She hesitated, then repeated, “No. I don't think he would have.”

I sighed. “Please tell him to take care of himself,” I said. “Make sure he gets some rest. He's not going to be much good to you or the baby if he doesn't.”

She put her fingers gently on my forearm—fingernails still dabbed with black—and nodded. “I know. He's trying to save money for the hospital. For the baby. I tell him not to work so hard.”

“Is this the sexiest thing you've got left?” Michelle asked, holding up a cover where somebody was kissing Meg Ryan.

“I think so,” Gloria said. “Everything else has been picked through. There was a carload of Millers from down Greenfield way, and those Carson brothers from north of town. Between them, they pretty much cleaned us out of naked bodies.”

“You must learn a lot more about people than you'd care to,” Michelle said, offering the tape and a five.

She considered for a moment as she rang it up. “No,” she decided. “I don't think I'll ever know enough about people.” She handed the tape back across the counter with our change. “Have a good time. I'll tell Michael you asked after him.”

After we got Lauren into bed, Michelle plugged the tape into the player in our bedroom and she got into bed and snuggled close. I lay stiffly, my leg hanging off the bed.

“What's wrong?” she asked about halfway through, turning off the sound with the remote.

“Nothing,” I said, and patted her reassuringly on the hip. It was one of those body-switching stories, which might have been interesting if I cared about any of the bodies. It was hard to feign interest in the far-fetched problems of Meg Ryan and Alec Baldwin when I had so many real-life worries.

We watched a little longer. It wasn't happening. At last she turned off the movie and said, “Do you know what I think, John?”

“What?”

She paused for a moment, then just came right out and said it. “I think nobody ever gets the life they want. Not completely. Not you. Not me. Not the kids. Not our parents. They get the life they're dealt. And the test is what we do with it.” She looked to see if I was hearing her. I was. “And we've done something good, haven't we?”

“Yes,” I said. “We have.” And that should have been enough.

So why wasn't it?

Later that night, I was still awake thinking, and I rolled silently from the bed and limped to the door.

“J. J.?” she groaned.

“It's okay,” I said. “I'm okay. I'm just going to get something to eat.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I could see her stretch and then settle back into the pillow, nestling in the sheets and quilts. “Okay. I love you.”

“I know,” I said.

I closed the door behind me and hobbled off to write a few letters. They wouldn't come, though. Instead, I jotted down some random things: the names of people in my life, past and present; my plans for the future, which written down seemed a scanty set of things to keep me occupied in the second half of my life; the phrase, underlined twice, “What am I going to do?”

I crumpled up all my pages, threw them into the fireplace, where they blazed and died, dropped my head to the desk, and let it rest there, my forehead against the cool, smooth surface. I thought about praying for guidance or help or some such thing, but if prayer is indeed answered, then the only response I've ever gotten has for twenty years been, “Hang in there.”

I thought a touch more about prayer in church that Sunday morning. I generally do a heap of thinking during the sermon, since our young pastor, Tommy Heiliger, never has an original thing to say, and thus I can pretty much tune him out and not worry about missing anything I haven't been hearing since I was seven years old. I don't mean to be critical—he's a good kid, and it takes a special kind of person to pastor a church full of farmers.

We sang a hymn—

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus' name.
On Christ the solid rock I stand.
All other ground is sinking sand.
All other ground is sinking sand—

And then his sermon was about how we Christians must associate only with right thoughts and right-thinking people, which was to say other Baptists, preferably the ones sitting to our left and right.

“To pull somebody up out of the quicksand, you've got to stand on solid ground,” Tommy was saying, to which a couple of people said “Amen.” “You can't help somebody to safety if you get down in the quicksand with 'em. That just guarantees you're going to sink too.”

It seemed to me like he was advocating a return into the ark—close up the doors, I'm safe, who cares about the world outside—although admittedly I am not much of an expert on theology. There were things I believed and rituals I practiced, but as the years rolled by I seemed to be absolutely sure about less and less. And as I sat there with the sermon buzzing about my ears, it began to seem to me that maybe on top of everything else, I was suffering a full-scale crisis of belief.

At last the organ began to play softly, which meant the sermon was winding down and we were launching into the invitation, so I checked the program and turned to the invitation hymn. We stood up and started into “I Surrender All,” and after two verses, we stopped singing, the choir continued humming softly, and Brother Tommy began to talk.