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get-togethers-weddings and parties, concerts, jam sessions, hootenannies, funerals, recitals, rehearsals, gigs in bars-than seemed possible for one kid. He played all over the central part of the state, and Ty and I saw him in all his incarnations-flannel shirt and boots, tux, blue suit, black leather jacket. His energy and his lust for playing music looked inexhaustible.

    I never knew what he saw in Rose, not that there was nothing to see-I always adored Rose-only that there was nothing in her that was like anything in him. She was pretty but not beautiful, smart but caustic, never chic, never ambitious, always intent on teaching elementary school for a few years, then getting married and having two children and living back on a farm, though not necessarily our farm-a horse farm in Kentucky was one of her early ambitions.

    When she started to date Pete and we met him, his spiral seemed to be widening, carrying him to cities-Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis, and beyond. I was worried that Rose would get hurt, would count too much on someone who would have to leave her behind.

    Then he announced he was tired of the road, and even of music, that he wanted to settle down and learn how to farm, and they got married and he brought that same enthusiasm to this new venture, but he could never seem to get on the right side of Daddy. I doubt that Rose and Pete actually intended to stay long on this farm-they were more ambitious than that. Pete was up early and late, brimming with ideas, fevered with ideas. Pete wanted to make a killing, and an idea hatched was already in his own estimation a killing made, concrete and cherished.

    Doubt, especially my father's doubt, was much more than a challenge, it was more like the sudden disappearance of something almost in his grasp. It took me years to understand the depth of Pete's disappointment when his enthusiasms met with my father's inevitable skepticism. His anger would be quiet, but corrosive, later erupting at odd times toward Ty or Rose, even ú at me or his daughters, wildly, viciously eloquent, insults and threats, mounting crazily until you couldn't believe your ears. It frightened ú me, but it didn't frighten Rose. She would stand back, her arms crossed over her chest, slowly shaking her head, saying, "You should hear yourself you really should hear yourself." Cool, dismissive, Inviting punishment. Punishment came, later, not often, but enough.

    Then, one night, he broke her arm, and after that, that was four years ago, he never touched her again, went through another change, into a kind of settled, sour despair. He drank. My father drank. They came to see eye to eye on this.

    Their wedding picture used to sit on the piano in their living room, and though Pete put on less weight over the years than any of us, he looked less like his youthful self than any of us-his face was lined and wrinkled from the sun, his hair was bleached pale, his body was knotted and stiff with tension. That laughing, musical boy, the impossible merry James Dean, had been stolen away.

    A share in the farm would be the first encouragement my father had ever given Pete, the first dream he had ever allowed Pete to realize, the first time he'd treated Pete like more than a hired hand or a city boy.

    My fears for Ty were motivated by affection. My fears for Pete were motivated by dread.

    The problem, I thought, would be to get my father to acknowledge what he'd said his plans were. I was turning this over in my mind, looking back and forth between Marv Carson's rosy-peachy cheeks and my father's dour countenance, when Marv solved everything for me. He said, "I used to work live days a week. Now I work eight. But that's just it.

    There isn't any distinction between work and play. It's a flow, like everything else. Anyway, I've got some papers in the car, and I talked to Ken LaSalle last night. We can meet here after church, and chat about everything, and sign. How's that?"

    "Can't be soon enough for