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“Well, he doesn’t look like everyone else around here, if that’s what you mean—”

And it went on that way, back and forth, for twenty minutes while the air heated up and we badgered each other politely. After a while I just sat there like a smouldering rag, while the whole thing took on a kind of horrible unreality. We ceased talking to each other and started talking at each other and when I left, I went with an ultimatum.

“I’m afraid I must ask you not to bring him here any more, Mr. Graves.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m very serious. You and Mrs. Graves are still of course perfectly welcome. But—”

“I understand—”

“You understand my position?”

“Perfectly.” I snapped. “All too well.”

“Personally, I find what you’ve done admirable.”

“Yes. A bit like the Good Samaritan, say?” I rose to go. “Thank you very much.”

“Try to understand.” He looked genuinely pained. I think he’d been expecting instant docility and I’d surprised him.

“I understand very well,” I said. “You couldn’t have made it clearer.”

His hand rose in farewell. It was one of those gestures churchmen use when they want to appear benevolent. It looked merely idiotic and as ambiguous and mealy-mouthed as the man who’d made it. “I trust I shall see you next Sunday,” he said.

“Very frankly, Reverend, I don’t know that you will.” I turned to go.

He called after me, “I urge you to find out something about this boy before you go much further with him.”

I didn’t even pause to acknowledge those last words. I merely closed the door behind me. And so it was.

There was nothing harsh about it. It was all very cordial and civilized, and that made it all the more rancorous to me.

When I got outside in the street Alice and Richard were waiting there in the car. The moment Alice saw me, she could tell something was wrong. I got into the car without saying a word, started the motor instantly, and we drove home. Richard remained wonderfully oblivious to the whole thing. He sat in the back wedged in amidst the grocery bundles we had picked up on the way home. At one point he started to hum “Nearer My God to Thee” while along the road the tight little buds of trees were just beginning to open.

I didn’t know what course of action I would take until I got home that day and discussed the entire matter with Alice. Richard had changed from Sunday clothes to his work clothes and disappeared out back. Then, with my voice trembling and my cheeks flamed, I laid the entire business out to her. It didn’t take us very long to make up our minds about a course of action. Shortly after, I was able to compose a brief letter to Reverend Horn.

Dear Reverend Horn:

Since I feel closer to the original teaching of the Lord in the presence of our young house guest than I have ever felt in your congregation, I must regretfully tender my resignation from it.

I wish to assure you that my faith in our Lord and His Church remains undiminished. But as to the men whose duty it is to minister to His flocks, I must sadly report that as a result of our discussion today, they have dropped sharply in my esteem.

I shudder to think of the kind of hospitality the infant Jesus and his parents would have been afforded by your parishioners had they shown up here today instead of to that manger in Bethlehem so many years ago.

Yours very truly,

A. Graves

So it was. I took that step and took it happily, convinced as I was of the rightness and justice of my decision.

I mark that day as a turning point in our lives. From that time on, we left the fold of our fellow man behind and began to live exclusively for and by ourselves.

Still our lives remained outwardly unchanged. We maintained the same routine we had before our breech with the church. We saw no people socially, but then we seldom, if ever, did. We continued to go to town two times a week to do our marketing. We still exchanged civilities with local merchants and clerks. We nodded to people on the street. The only change that came about was the manner of our weekly worship, and that didn’t really change, either, since we continued to worship on Sundays. But instead of going to church, our home became the church, and there on Sundays the three of us said prayers and sang psalms while a benevolent morning sun streamed into our parlor.

If there was indeed any significant change, it wasn’t outward. It was rather a change that took place within the three of us. Along with the sense of growing isolation, there sprang up between us a sense of interdependence. We lived by helping and caring for each other. In short, we lived as though we were the last three people on earth, and quite frankly, it didn’t seem to bother us at all.

Along about mid-March we had a visitor.

Alice and I were in the garden turning soil and raking up the debris left by winter—broken twigs and dead leaves, mingled with the desiccated carcasses of birds and small animals that had perished in the icy blasts. It was late afternoon. Richard, as usual, was still off in the woods. I was in the midst of hauling a sack of dead leaves and twigs to a compost heap we have out back. It wasn’t a heavy sack, just the sort of mildly strenuous thing the doctors say is very good for a man in my condition.

Just as I reached the heap, a horn blasted in the driveway, and I heard Alice cry out. I turned just in time to see my nephew, Wylie Crane, climbing out of a car and Alice running toward him. When I reached there, he was hugging her and at the same time waving to me.

“Hi, Uncle Albert!”

“For God’s sake, Wylie, you might’ve given us a little warning.”

“I didn’t know I was coming myself, until about twenty minutes ago. I was on the throughway, saw your exit, and got a yen to see Aunt Alice.”

Alice cooed and kissed him again. I made a dour face. “But of course not me?”

“Most of all you, Uncle Albert.” He threw his arm around me and we all laughed.

Wylie was attending a polytechnical college in a large city to the north of us. It was his custom to stop off and visit for a few days at least once a year, either going to or coining from school. Generally he’d write or call to warn us. This time, however, he hadn’t. But, as always, it was a great pleasure to see him. He was a delightful young man of about nineteen, the image of my sister Blanche, who, of five brothers and sisters, was my great favorite. Now, since her death, whenever I look at Wylie, and particularly when he laughs, I can see Blanche laughing in his eyes. When she died, Wylie grew very close to us, particularly to Alice, who became almost a mother to him.

I reached into the car and grabbed his bag. “You’re going to spend a few days, aren’t you?”

He looked back and forth at each of us. “Will it be all right? I mean—just barging in and all like this—”

“Frankly it’s going to be a great nuisance,” I said, throwing my arm around him. “But we’ll muddle through.”

“Oh, don’t pay any attention to your uncle,” Alice said. “Have you eaten?” She locked her arm in his and started to drag him toward the house. Wylie saw me lift his bag. “Let me take that, Uncle Albert.”

I waved him away. “You have your fishing gear, I hope?”

“In the car.”

“Good. We might just as well go up and try the stream tomorrow. I haven’t been out yet this season. How’s your father?”

When we reached the house, I saw Alice turn and look at the washline just behind the kitchen. Dangling from it was a pair of Richard’s overalls dancing in a playful breeze. They had a strangely foreboding look hanging there disembodied and swaying slowly back and forth against the sky. The moment she saw them, a green sickish look crossed her face. “Oh, Albert.”

I knew exactly what she was thinking. The room we’d fixed up for Richard was the room Wylie always slept in. Now there was the sticky problem of sleeping accommodations and all that.

Wylie sensed that something was up. “What is it, Aunt Alice?”

“Nothing at all,” I said, dismissing it with a wave of the hand. “We have a little surprise for you, Wylie. Don’t we, Alice?”

The business of sleeping was straightened out very quickly. We had no intention of displacing Richard during the course of my nephew’s visit. We had a cot upstairs in the attic, and that was to be set up in the parlor for Wylie.

Their first meeting took place at supper. Wylie was upstairs having a bath when Richard came in, earlier than usual. He seemed very buoyant, full of good spirits, and unusually talkative for Richard Atlee.

He’d been in the forest all afternoon and later back in the bog. It seemed he’d found a cave there that had gone almost a hundred feet underground. He’d measured its depth by carrying down a full spool of string with him.

“I come across it a couple of days ago,” he said, “and brought back string today.”

“What’d you see down there?” I asked.

“Nothin’ much. Bats and things.”

Alice, puttering over the oven, made a sound of revulsion.

“There’s a stream down there, too,” Richard went on excitedly. “I could hear it right under my feet.”

“See any other signs of life?” I asked.

“It was too dark. But there are signs of bear. Probable hole up down there for the winter.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “And you went down there?”

“They’re all out now,” he said, and smiled a crooked little smile. Smiling a bit now and then was one of the more recent developments in him.

“I’d love to see it,” I said.

His eyes glowed. “Would you?”

“Never mind,” said Alice. “Stay out of there, the two of you. For your own good and my piece of mind, as well.” She thrust a relish tray at Richard. “Here. Put this on the table.”

I’ll never forget his face when he saw the fourth setting. I was sitting almost directly opposite him when it dawned on him that there was something different in the design of the table. I hadn’t mentioned a word about Wylie to him. Not intentionally, mind you. I’d simply forgotten it in the excitement of the cave story.

At first it was rather funny—that look of puzzlement and disbelief on his face. I was just about to tell him, but it was too late. Suddenly there was Wylie’s footstep on the floor above and then the vital sound of boyish steps bounding downstairs. Richard half rose from his chair. In the next moment Wylie turned the corner and peered in. We’d told him as much as we could about Richard, and now, scrubbed and with a flush of good health all about him, he entered the parlor and walked directly to him, smiling with a hand extended. “Hi.”

Alice entered with a platter just in time to see Richard’s jaw fall and his eyes widen to an awesome size.

“Richard,” I said, leaping into the breach, “this is my nephew, Wylie Crane.”

But by that time the damage had been done. You could see it all over his face. Resentment rushed in where surprise left off. When we finally sat down to dinner, Richard kept his eyes lowered and looked at everything on the table with suspicion. He was like a man who suspected that his food had been poisoned. He’d been elected to die, and so he sat down now to supper with all of his poisoners.

Supper was a disaster. Several attempts were made at dinner conversation—all abortive. Wylie sensed the need of a special effort and extended himself gallantly.

“You’re not from around here?” he asked with the best of intentions.

“Nope.” Richard said, scowling into his plate.

“I didn’t think so,” Wylie said. “You sound Western.”

“Uh-huh,” Richard said and went on chewing. Then there was silence and all I could hear was the sound of that chewing—quick and angry—while his larynx went bobbing furiously up and down.

“Are you?” Wylie went on undaunted.

Richard stopped eating, his knife and fork poised in midair. “Am I what?”

“Western.”

“I said I was.”

“Oh,” said Wylie, a trifle baffled but still smiling. “I didn’t quite get you.”

Richard stared at him for a moment and then went on eating. The silence flooded in once more and we all went on eating, buried in our plates while the sound of Richard’s furious chewing rang out across the table.

I could see that Alice was miserable, and so I threw myself into the breach. “Any good fishing up your way, Wylie?”

“We were out just last week.”

“Any luck?”

“Oh, sure. I got about five. Couple of nice ones, too. Bass, mostly.”

“Large-mouth?”

Wylie nodded, chattering on in a lively fashion. When I glanced at Richard, he appeared to be a hundred miles off somewhere.

“I got one eight-pounder. Should’ve seen him when I brought him up, Uncle Albert. Head twice as big as my fist.” It was a joy to be in the presence of all that boyish enthusiasm.

“Get him on a fly rod?” I asked.

“You might’ve taken him on a fly rod,” Wylie laughed. “I was happy enough just to get him on a rod and reel.”

“Well,” I said eagerly, “tomorrow we’ll break out the fly rods.”

Alice’s gloom deepened. Undoubtedly she felt that Richard had been excluded from the conversation. And in fact he had—by his own choice. She turned to him now, making a valiant effort to smile. “You know, Richard, Albert and Wylie have fished together for years.”

“Oh?” said Richard. He fiddled distractedly with some peas on his plate.

She went on hopefully, trying to lure him into conversation. “Albert taught Wylie to fish when he was a little boy.” She laughed, but there was a lot of forced merriment to it. “I’ll never forget Wylie. He was about ten at the time, and three feet tall. It was about three feet, wasn’t it, Albert?”

“Certainly no more.”

“Well,” Alice went on, laughing in that giddy, desperate way, “you should’ve seen this poor boy struggle up the dock with a pole three times his size. I tell you it was worth the price of admission. Remember Indian Lake, Wylie?”

“No one ever lets me forget it,” Wylie laughed. “All that snagging and the snarled lines. And all the lures I lost for poor Uncle Albert.”

I had a sudden vision of a summer’s -day nearly a decade past. I saw myself ten years younger. Healthy and more vigorous. A sound heart in my chest, and Blanche alive then, with Alice and George Crane, Wylie’s father, all watching us from the shadows of a screened porch and howling gales of laughter ringing out over the lake. The moment was alive for me again. Just as vivid as if I were right there. I could hear ice tinkling in a lemonade pitcher from the porch, the rattle of cicada, the barking of an unseen dog across the lake, and the distant buzzing of an outboard motor far out over the water. There was the smell of verbena reaching out across the space of a decade, and the reflection of trees hanging upside down in the water.