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do you think of that, the son-of-a-bitch didn’t even hear me out,” Karla said, turning to Bobby Lee.
    “Can’t we just go home—my toe hurts,” he said.
    “I don’t want to go home,” Karla said. “I want Duane to get in the car. If we don’t nip this development in the bud there’s no telling where we’ll end up.”
    “It’s not a crime to walk,” Bobby Lee pointed out.
    “If he went all the way to the cabin and now nearly all the way back, that’s twelve miles he’s walked today!” Karla said, to emphasize her point.
    Bobby Lee had to admit that she had come up with an impressive calculation—twelve miles was farther than anyone in Thalia had walked in living memory, at least as far as he was aware. He himself had once had to walk nearly two miles when he got his pickup stuck while duck hunting one morning. Twelve miles, by his rough calculation, was six times as far as two miles.
    “Just thinking about all them miles makes my feet hurt,” he admitted.
    “But it’s still not a crime,” he added. “And it don’t necessarily mean he’s crazy.”
    “I don’t like it that you’re weakening,” Karla said.
    “It’s because my toe hurts,” Bobby Lee assured her.
    Karla slowly turned the BMW around in the narrow country road.
    “You didn’t even ask him to get in,” she said to Bobby Lee. “He never does anything I ask him to do but he might get in if you asked him.”
    “Doubtful,” Bobby Lee said.
    “Won’t you even try?” she asked.
    Bobby Lee was silent, a response Karla took to mean no. Disgusted, she shoved the pedal to the metal. By the time she passed her husband she was going eighty-six. If her husband was determined to refuse her perfectly polite offer of a ride, then she wanted to see that he ate a little dust.
    “Slow down, there’s a bridge; we’ll be airborne if you hit it going this fast,” Bobby Lee said, regretting, once again, that hehad allowed himself to be drawn into a controversy between a husband and a wife.
    Duane tucked his chin into his jacket when his wife went roaring by. The dusty cloud she raised was still hanging over the road when he crossed the pavement. What was left of the sunset showed yellow through the drifting dust.

6
    W HEN D UANE STEPPED INTO HIS HOUSE the kitchen was a maelstrom, as it usually was when dinnertime approached. Little Bascom, Nellie’s two-year-old, had managed to claw his way up on the kitchen counter and was cramming one fist into a big jar of peanut butter and then proceeded to lick it off, an activity which evidently enjoyed the approval of Rag, the elderly cook, who was frying round steak and making what she liked to refer to as her “signature cream gravy,” all only a foot or two south of Little Bascom.
    “Why are you letting him do this?” Duane asked, immediately setting Little Bascom back on the floor where he belonged. Then he spun off some paper towels and managed to get the little boy’s fist more or less free of peanut butter.
    “Because he was whining, that’s why,” Rag said, without looking up from her task. “I can’t cook my gourmet food with whiny kids underfoot.”
    “Then you’ve taken the wrong job,” Duane informed her. “We’ve got a large surplus of whiny kids around here.”
    “Little Bascom was starving, that’s my analysis,” Rag assured him. “Nellie drifts around listening to her Walkman all day and lets her kids fend for themselves.”
    “I didn’t say she was a perfect mother,” Duane countered. “Just make him a peanut butter sandwich next time, okay? Who knows what else he’s had his fist in.”
    “I know, the poo-poo,” Bubbles said.
    “Shut up, you snitch!” Willy said. The two of them were already at table, waiting politely for the food to be served.
    “Hi, kids,” Duane said. Not only were his grandkids beautiful; they had healthy appetites as well.
    “I’m mad at you, Pa-Pa,” Bubbles said. “I didn’t want you to go crazy.”
    “Shut up, he doesn’t