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bar. ‘I’m only thinking about right this minute now,’ he said. He squeezed my shoulder again, then put his hands back into his jacket pockets. ‘Aren’t you cold?’
    ‘I’m a little cold,’ I said.
    ‘Then go back home,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to watch me get on a bus. It might be a long time. Your mother’s probably thinking about you.’
    ‘All right,’ I said.
    ‘She doesn’t need to get mad at you. She’s mad enough at me.’
    I looked at my father. I tried to see his face in the streetlight. He was smiling and looking at me, and I think he was happy for that moment, happy for me to be with him, happy that he was going to a fire now to risk whatever he cared about risking. It seemed strange to me, though, that he could be a man who played golf for a living and then one day become a man who fought forest fires. But it’s what was happening, and I thought I would get used to it.
    ‘Are you too old now to give your old dad a kiss?’ my father said. ‘Men love each other, too. You know that, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. And he took my cheeks in his hands and kissed me on the mouth, and squeezed my face. His breath smelled sweet to me and his face was rough.
    ‘Don’t let what your parents do disappoint you,’ he said.
    ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I won’t.’ I felt afraid then for some reason, and I thought if I stayed there I would show him that I was, so I turned around and started back up Central in the dark and the growing cold. When I got to the corner I turned to wave good-bye. But my father was not in sight, and I thought that he had already gotten onto the bus and was waiting in his seat among the Indians.

Chapter 3
    When I got home the lights were still on in our house. My mother was watching television in her bedroom, still dressed, and drinking a glass of beer. When I came in the door she looked at me as if I was my father and whatever she thought about him she thought about me, too.
    ‘Is he gone off to fight the big fire now?’ she said. She was almost casual in the way she said this. She reached and put down her glass on the bed table.
    ‘He got on a bus,’ I said.
    ‘Just like a school-boy,’ she said. She looked at her glass of beer.
    ‘He told me he hadn’t intended to cause any trouble.’
    ‘I’m sure it’s true,’ my mother said. ‘He has very beautiful intentions. What’s your opinion?’
    ‘I think it’s all right,’ I said.
    My mother reached for her glass and took a drink out ofit and shook her head while she swallowed. ‘What about me?’ she said, and rested her glass on her stomach. People on the television were laughing. A fat man was running around a small man and being chased by a dog. I didn’t feel comfortable being in the room at that moment. ‘Maybe he’s going to leave me. Maybe we’re on our own right now.’
    ‘I don’t think he’s going to do that,’ I said.
    ‘We haven’t been very intimate lately. You might as well hear that.’
    I did not say anything.
    ‘You probably think I’m making too big a deal out of this, don’t you?’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking,’ I said.
    ‘Nobody really wants to please you, that’s all.’ She shook her head as if it was almost a joke. ‘That’s all. They want to please themselves. If you’re happy with that, then everything’s great. If you aren’t, too bad. That’s important,’ my mother said. ‘It’s the key to everything.’ She put her head back on the pillow and stared up at the light globe in the ceiling. ‘Happiness. Sadness. The works. You’re happy if–’
    Just at that moment the phone started to ring in the kitchen. I turned to go answer it, but my mother said, ‘Let’s don’t answer that.’ The phone kept ringing, loud and with a hard metal sound where it sat on the table, as if something urgent was waiting to be said by whoever was calling. But we were not going to hear it. I must’ve looked nervous because my mother smiled at me, a