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kitchen, I was momentarily flummoxed about where to start in taming the filth, and then I figured that a big garbage bag would do for openers. I shoved in paper plates and plastic forks and plastic cups (after I had drained the half-filled ones into the kitchen sink) and anything that carried a hint of garbage. The unopened mail, and there was a lot of it, got stacked on the table until I could go through it with Dad.
    “What happened?” I asked. “This place was spotless a few months ago.”
    “I’ve been busy.”
    “Busy doing what?”
    “Busy.”
     
     
    I tamed the dining room and kitchen. Next, I ventured to the bathroom. I had already seen the bedroom I would be staying in, and it was mercifully clear of mess. The only bathroom in the place was not. The stench of dried urine knocked me back when I cracked open the door. I peeked in, and my eyes confirmed what my nose suspected. Bath towels that hadn’t been washed in who knows how long hung from the shower curtain rod, soap scum ringed the tub, and Dad’s errant whizzing had left little yellow puddles between the sink and the tub.
    “Do you have rubber gloves?” I yelled to him.
    “Just leave it.”
    “It’s no problem.”
    “Under the kitchen sink.”
    As I walked back through, I saw that Dad had made a halfhearted attempt at helping, but from what I could see, he had just rearranged the newspapers and other detritus in the living room into more orderly stacks. I found him in his recliner, fiddling with the TV remote.
    “What do you want to do with all of this newspaper, Dad? Do you recycle it?”
    “Maybe I want to keep it.”
    I held up a front page of the Billings Gazette , dated July 14, 2007.
    “You save those sewer-bond stories, eh?” I said.
    His anger struck like lightning.
    “Don’t fucking baby me. Do you hear me? Don’t do it.”
    “Whoa. I’m not babying you. I’m just cracking a little joke.”
    “It’s not funny.”
    “No, apparently not.”
    Dad fumed but said nothing else.
    I went to the kitchen, dug out the rubber gloves and cleaning solution, and then I trudged down the hallway to finish in the bathroom.
    A few minutes later, I heard him coming down the hallway. I sat on my knees with my head pinned between the toilet and the bathroom cabinet as I scrubbed the floor.
    “I’m going to lay down for a little while,” he said.
    “All right, Dad. I’m nearly finished in here.”
    He stepped down the hall and shut the door. For the next four-plus hours, the house was mine.
     
     
    By the time Dad emerged, at just past seven, I had made the house habitable again. I had dragged five big, brimming garbage bags to the bin, mopped the floors, washed dishes, collated the mail, and dusted the furniture. The only chore left was to run a vacuum cleaner, something I had left undone while Dad slept.
    I sat in his recliner, watched Monday Night Football, and ate a pizza I had found in the freezer. I offered Dad his chair, but he motioned for me to stay put and sat on the couch opposite me.
    “Place looks good,” he said.
    “It’ll do. You want something to eat?”
    “Not hungry.” He turned to the TV. “Who’s playing?”
    “Washington and Philly.”
    “Who’s up?”
    “Washington, 3–0.”
    The game mattered little. A lifelong Montanan, Dad threw in with the Denver Broncos. Having grown up in Washington, I hitched my allegiance to the Seattle Seahawks. That had made for some good-natured banter between us when I was a kid and they were in the same division, but silence had long since ensured that we had no room in our relationship for a triviality like football.
    “So, Dad, what happened with the house?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Come on. I just spent four hours cleaning it.”
    “Nobody asked you to do that.”
    “It was either me or the HAZMAT crew, Pop.”
    “I told you. Don’t mouth off.”
    There was much I could say to that—starting with the absurdity of Dad’s scolding a grown man as if he were a