As the train rocked dead at Livingston he saw the man, in a worn khaki shirt with button flaps buttoned, arms crossed. The boy’s hand sprang up by reflex, and his face broke into a smile. The man smiled back gravely, and nodded. He did not otherwise move. The boy turned from the window and, with the awesome deliberateness of a fat child harboring reluctance, began struggling to pull down his bag. His father would wait on the platform. First sight of him had reminded the boy that nothing was simple enough now for hurrying.
They drove in the old open Willys toward the cabin beyond town. The windshield of the Willys was up, but the fine cold sharp rain came into their faces, and the boy could not raise his eyes to look at the road. He wore a rain parka his father had handed him at the station. The man, protected by only the khaki, held his lips strung in a firm silent line that seemed more grin than wince. Riding through town in the cold rain, open topped and jaunty, getting drenched as though by necessity, was—the boy understood vaguely—somehow in the spirit of this season.
“We have a moose tag,” his father shouted.
The boy said nothing. He refused to care what it meant, that they had a moose tag.
“I’ve got one picked out. A bull. I’ve stalked him for two weeks. Up in the Crazies. When we get to the cabin, we’ll build a good roaring fire.” With only the charade of a pause, he added, “Your mother.” It was said like a question. The boy waited. “How is she?”
“All right, I guess.” Over the jeep’s howl, with the wind stealing his voice, the boy too had to shout.
“Are you friends with her?”
“I guess so.”
“Is she still a beautiful lady?”
“I don’t know. I guess so. I don’t know that.”
“You must know that. Is she starting to get wrinkled like me? Does she seem worried and sad? Or is she just still a fine beautiful lady? You must know that.”
“She’s still a beautiful lady, I guess.”
“Did she tell you any messages for me?”
“She said . . . she said I should give you her love,” the boy lied, impulsively and clumsily. He was at once embarrassed that he had done it.
“Oh,” his father said. “Thank you, David.”
They reached the cabin on a mile of dirt road winding through meadow to a spruce grove. Inside, the boy was enwrapped in the strong syncretic smell of all seasonal mountain cabins: pine resin and insect repellent and a mustiness suggesting damp bathing trunks stored in a drawer. There were yellow pine floors and rope-work throw rugs and a bead curtain to the bedroom and a cast-iron cook stove with none of the lids or handles missing and a pump in the kitchen sink and old issues of Field and Stream, and on the mantel above where a fire now finally burned was a picture of the boy’s grandfather, the railroad telegrapher, who had once owned the cabin. The boy’s father cooked a dinner of fried ham, and though the boy did not like ham he had expected his father to cook canned stew or Spam, so he said nothing. His father asked him about school and the boy talked and his father seemed to be interested. Warm and dry, the boy began to feel safe from his own anguish. Then his father said:
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