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was oblivious to everything. I knew the feeling, somewhere inside me, some muscle and bone remembered. But it eludes me, like T-Bone. I have never been able to paint T-Bone. I have made a thousand sketches of him. Not one is T-Bone. He is my one great artistic failure. I wish I could give him up. But I keep coming back.
    The music lifted, floating up to the top of the barn, which seemed as high as a cathedral. T-Bone tapped and tapped. He was in a trance, in some kind of spiritual experience, a whirling scarecrow in flannel shirt, blue jeans, and Montreal Expos baseball hat. He was marvelous and when the milking was done and the show was over, I clapped my hands. He gasped for breath, now sweating in his long johns and flannel shirt, and smiled at me like a small, shy flower.

    When I am at T-Bone’s house, he always feeds me. It could be the middle of the afternoon or the middle of the night and he’d insist a four-course meal is no trouble.
    While T-Bone cooked pancakes, scrambled eggs, and sausage on the iron stove, I set the table. On the table were a pitcher of milk from his own cows, butter made from that same milk, maple syrup from his own trees, and cinnamon rolls from his own recipe. Muffins, croissants, French bread, coffee cake, rolls. Anything with yeast, flour, and butter is right up T-Bone’s culinary alley. He took up the kitchen detail at a young age; his Uncle Andre had been the worst cook in Canada.
    The hotcakes disappeared as we silently traded sections of the newspaper. T-Bone devoured the news, from front to back, every headline and dateline. Car bombing, nine dead. Plane crash, one hundred sixty-seven dead. Price supports, dead. Summit talks, believed dead. American farmers, dead or dying. It was enough food to fuel a worrier of his caliber for a month. But T-Bone breezed through the paper immuned to catastrophe and mayhem.
    Spending the morning with his cows and his dancing was, for T-Bone, like going to church or being downwind of a bonfire of burning marijuana. He was untouchable, protected by the euphoria that sang along his nerves and the peace that settled softly upon his spirit like a billowing blanket. As the day wore on and the experience wore off, he would begin to worry again, stew over me and milk prices and what those idiot politicians in Washington would do next. But for now, he was whole and happy. Salvation seemed as close as the milk jug at his elbow. When he was like this, I wanted to burrow close to his peaceful aura like a small animal seeking shelter from the winter wind. His calm seemed as real as concrete, capable of withstanding the battering of Odie’s tenacity, Wynn’s well-meaning nagging, and all the other guilt-laden vibes I had been receiving from the community lately.
    I sipped at my coffee. T-Bone did not believe in beer for breakfast.
    “I’m afraid,” I said. “They’re not going to leave this alone.”
    He gathered the dishes, took them to the sink, and ran hot, sudsy water over them. His strong arms dived into bubbles up to the elbow. The muscles in his forearms worked as he sponged a plate clean of syrup and pancake crumbs, rinsed it, and stacked it in the rubber dish drainer. I collected a red checkered dish towel dangling from the refrigerator handle, snatched the slick plate, and began to dry.
    “I haven’t painted in years, not real painting like I used to do,” I said.
    “Years.”
    “It’s not like I don’t want to paint. They think all I have to do is want it. That isn’t enough.”
    “So tell them.”
    “I have!”
    “What are they going to do? Tie you to your easel?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Maybe they’ll blackmail you. Unearth some indecent Maud Calhoun greeting cards.”
    “Don’t be absurd.”
    T-Bone washes dishes just as Wynn and I were taught in home economics. Glassware, silverware, plates first before the water turns too greasy, then pots and pans, the kitchen equipment that seldom touches the human mouth. When I wash