A Patient Boy, Page 2 of 8

I had some chores to do, but about an hour later I went out to see the fort. They were
having such a good time, Denny cutting, little Ted hauling the brush out. It was a fine space, too.

"We're each going to get a bedroom!" Denny said.

"Make sure you cut 'em close to the ground," I told him. Nothing has a greater affinity for tractor tires than brush stumps, and even though 1'd probably never take down that patch, it'd be good for him to get in the habit.

He said, "I know, Dad," with this "you don't have to tell me again" inflection not grudging
or anything, just kind of sweet, and I thought what a fine boy he was. He'd been sweet that way
since he could crawl. Little Ted sort of stormed everywhere. Denny checked everything out
first. Alice's mother used to say you can't guess what you're going to get with kids; they just
come out the way they're going to come out. Little Ted came out swinging. Denny came out
with a smile.

Denton. That was his real name. God, we'd argued about that one. "It's two
strikes against him the first day of school," I'd said.

"It was my Grandpa's name and that's what we're going to call him," Alice said.
Apparently she'd been planning this since God knows when, and it's pointless to argue with a woman when she's got her mind fixed.

"Besides," she added, "we'll be calling him Denny."

And she was right.

They were eating tuna fish sandwiches on the porch when 1 came in. Denny had a big smudge
of dirt on his forehead. Little Ted had two Band-Aids.

"We can't go in 'cause we didn't wash up," Little Ted announced.

"Can we take the sleeping bags out now?" Denny asked.

The road coming down past our place had a bit of a curve. Not enough to slow down if you
knew it was coming. They'd resurface it every ten years or so, gravel and oil no blacktop for us- but it made for a nice surface. Took the winters pretty well. Came up quite dark in the beginning, then after a summer or two it bleached out to a pale gray. Skid marks showed up like blood on a white shirt. Can't contradict a skid mark. Tells you right where the car went. My wife's cousin was a Connecticut state trooper, did accident analysis. He was the one they'd call whenever there was a bad one could tell you how fast the car was going, all kinds of stuff, just from looking at the skid marks. He couldn't tell you how to get them out, though. Bleach just turns the road white. You can scrub with soap and water for an hour and they hardly change color. Something about rubber and oil and rock. The violence of the moment doesn't want to be forgotten. Only time, summer after summer after summer, seems to make them finally start to fade.