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second helping. I didn’t like tuna casserole much either, and my mother knew it, so I took part of a second helping to let her know that I knew she was watching me and also to let her know that the potato chips helped out some.
    I watched as my father left the supper table when he got done eating his spuds and eggs. I saw in my head how he walked down the hallway of the butterflies and the dice, and into the front room, where he picked up the newspaper that my mother had folded for him and placed on the coffee table, and, because the evening was so hot, how my father went out onto the front porch. There was no screen on the front door, and no screen door spring to make any kind of sound. My mother poured my father’s coffee for him, stirred the two sugars in, cut him a piece of rhubarb pie, and took them out to him on the front porch. When my mother came back into the kitchen, sheunplugged the percolator and poured herself a cup of coffee and set the cup on the table. Then she went back to the stove and cut me a piece of rhubarb pie and asked me again what was wrong. I didn’t say anything until after I finished my pie; then I just shrugged my shoulders and still didn’t say anything because how do you start telling your mother something that begins with one thing that led to another? Just where do you start with something like that?
    The only way that you can begin is at the beginning. And so I finally began: “I have been swimming in the Portneuf pretty near all summer now,” I said, and looked at her. My mother looked back at me.
    And then my father walked in the door with the newspaper in his hand and said this, all at once, “That woman, that Injun woman cross the river, the one they call Sugar Babe, who lives with that nigger over there, well, they found her naked and floating in the river, dead. Been there a couple of days, it says here. Says there wasn’t much left of her, that some dogs or coyotes probably got to her in the river. And it says the nigger she lives with over there in that lean-to is missing. They got a posse out right now looking for that nigger. Says here they think the nigger probably killed her.” And then he said what he always said. “Always trouble with those kind of people. They just got a nose for it.”
    My father then looked at my mother and my mother looked at my father and then my mother looked back at me, her eye way off somewhere else, and then she crossed herself. I looked at my father and then we all looked at each other.
    â€œYour son’s been swimming in the Portneuf,” my mother said to my father. “And one thing always leads to another.” Then she said, “Forevermore,” and she crossed herself again.
    â€œHarold P. Endicott killed her, killed that woman Sugar Babe,” I said.
    â€œWhat were you doing in that river?” my father said. He dropped the paper on the floor.
    â€œEndicott hit her and she fell down and then the nigger jumped on top of Endicott and then Endicott whistled for his dogs, and his dogs attacked that woman and the nigger,” I said.
    â€œDidn’t I tell you to stay out of that river?” my father said.
    â€œThe nigger didn’t kill her, Endicott killed her, his hellhounds killed her.”
    â€œWhat were you doing in the Portneuf ?” my father said. “I told you not to go in the river.”
    â€œThe nigger didn’t kill her, I know it. It was Endicott who did it. She was his mother.”
    â€œWho was his mother?” my mother said.
    â€œThat woman, Sugar Babe,” I said.
    â€œWhose mother?” my mother said.
    â€œThe nigger’s! He wouldn’t kill his mother.” My mother’s left eye started to drift.
    â€œHow do you know she was his mother?” my father asked.
    â€œThat’s what the nigger called her when the dogs was on them.” I said.
    â€œForevermore!” my mother said, and crossed herself.
    â€œNone