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much unlike her. I mused and fantasized about what would happen later—in high school, about chess victories, and college. It might not have appeared to be true, but Berner was probably more realistic in her skepticism than I was in my own views. It might’ve been better for her, given how her life turned out, to have stayed in Great Falls and married some good-hearted farmer and had a lot of children who she could’ve taught things to, which would’ve rendered her happy and taken the sour look off her young face—which was, after all, just her defense against being innocent. She and my mother kept a silent closeness between them that had nothing to do with me. I accepted and appreciated this closeness for Berner’s sake. I felt she needed it more than I did, since I thought I was better adjusted at the time. I was supposedly close with my father—which was what boys were expected to be, even in our family. But it wasn’t possible to be very close to him. He was away from the house much of the time—first, at the base; and then when that fell away, being cast off in the world, selling then not selling cars, then learning to sell farms and ranches, and eventually middle manning stolen beeves to be trucked by larcenous Indians down to the Great Northern depot, a plan that would be his undoing. All our undoing, finally. In truth, we were never very close, although I loved him as if we were.
    IT SEEMS POSSIBLE , I suppose, to look back at our small family as being doomed, as waiting to sink below the churning waves, and being destined for corruption and failure. But I cannot truly portray us that way, or the time as a bad or unhappy time, in spite of it being far out of the ordinary. I can see my father out on the small lawn of our rented, faded mustard-yellow house with white shutters, my tiny mother seated on the porch steps, hugging her knees, wearing her blousy, sailcloth shorts; my father in snappy tan slacks and a sky-blue shirt and a yellow-diamond snakeskin belt and new black cowboy boots he’d bought for himself after his discharge. He is tall and smiling and un-self-aware (although with secrets). My mother’s dense hair is pulled back careless and bushy with a scarf. She is watching him inexpertly putting up a badminton net in our side yard. The ’55 Chevrolet is at the curb in the stalky elm shade under the soft Montana sky. My mother’s small eyes are focused estimatingly, her features pinching into her nose behind her glasses. My sister and I are helping unspool the net—since it’s for us that the badminton is being erected. Suddenly my mother smiles and raises her chin at something he says: “Nothing’s foolproof around me, Neevy,” or “We’re not very good at this,” or “I know how to drop bombs, but not how to put up nets.” “We know that,” she says. Then they both have a laugh. He had his good sense of humor, and so did she, though as I’ve said she rarely felt the impulse to avail herself of it. This was typical of them and all of us at that time. My father went off to work that summer at one place or other. I began to read my book about chess and also about keeping bees, which I’d decided would be my other project in high school because no one else, I thought, would know about bees—which were an interest, I felt, likelier to be found in rural schools where there was FFA or 4-H. My mother had begun reading European novels (Stendhal and Flaubert); and since there was a little Catholic college in Great Falls, she’d begun going out there and attending a summer class once a week. My sister had suddenly, in spite of her severe views of the world and bad temperament, discovered a boyfriend—whom she’d met on the street walking home from the Rexall (which upset my father, though he soon forgot about it). My parents didn’t drink alcohol or fight with each other or to my knowledge have other lovers. My mother may have felt a “physical ennui,” and thought increasingly of