Heidi jumps up and down, clapping with glee, with no sense of her father’s humiliation. We try to shake their hands, but only Weeks and Neilson respond. Marshall slams the ball into the ground so hard it lands two courts away, and he and Barbour disappear into the crowd.

Dad waits until he’s sure Rich is gone, then hoists Heidi onto his shoulders at her request. Chris dances around like he’s been set free, Jackie claps his fins together like a baby seal, Simon thrusts a meaty fist into the air while Dan runs over our stats to deaf ears. Tay-Roy and Kristen watch.

As we gather the last of our gear, we hear gasps on the other side of the court and look up to see the crowd part. I glimpse the muzzle of the deer rifle, think it’s pointed at Dad, and scream his name, but Rich levels the barrel on Heidi, the one person whose loss would touch us all most. Dad whirls at the sound of my voice and instinctively dives directly into the path of the bullet. His body crashes to the pavement with a thud.

There is chaos. Later I will learn that Barbour followed Marshall back, trying to catch and stop him, and was actually the guy who got the gun away; and that Alicia threw herself over Heidi and the boys in an act that will go a long way toward getting her kids back in her care.

But in the moment, there is only me and Dad. He says, “Oh, man, this is bad.”

I’m screaming for a doctor, but he puts his hand to my mouth. “Is Heidi okay?”

I spot her under Alicia, next to Georgia. “Yeah. She’s okay. Hold on, Dad. They’re getting help.” All around me people holler for a doctor.

He shakes his head, and I see blood leaking onto the pavement. He says, “This doesn’t feel good, T. J. I don’t think we have much time.”

“Dad, be quiet. Just relax. There’s help.”

“Listen!” He breathes slowly, and I hear air being sucked through the wound. “His name…was Tyler.”

“What?”

“The little boy. Under the truck…I can see him…” I hear the sucking sound again. “This isn’t…the light and the tunnel thing. I just see him…remember. The widow…she was Stacy…Stacy Couples.”

“Dad, hold on.” His head is cradled in the crook of my arm, and I look up and scream again for help. The crowd moves in; there are sirens.

“I’m not going to make it, T. J.” I can feel him giving up, relaxing. “Listen to me…I’m not afraid, but listen. Not one minute…” He starts to fade but fights back. “Not one minute…for revenge…”

“Dad, come on. Stay with me.”

“Listen!”

I hold his head tighter.

“Not one minute for revenge. I’ve spent my life…looking back…wanting to change things… This is okay… Promise you won’t…”

I glance over at Rich Marshall, pinned to the ground by Tay-Roy and Mike Barbour. Barbour is screaming at him. If I weren’t with Dad, I’d kill him. “Dad…”

“Promise.”

“Dad…”

“Promise!”

I do.

“You’re going to…have to…forgive him, T. J… He had no idea…what he was doing…”

That was Jesus’ last line. “Hold on, Dad.”

“You’re sure Heidi’s okay?”

“She’s okay, Dad. Alicia’s got her.”

He smiles faintly. “Guess I killed one and I saved one. Tell your mother…”

Oh, God, my mother.

“Tell her I love her.”

“You’ll tell her yourself, Dad. Just hold on.”

“Tell her thanks.”

He smiles, and I feel the most familiar feeling I know, that of the deer slipping away. My father is gone. I didn’t get a chance to tell him…he saved two.

There is a doctor, then paramedics. They pound his chest, give him mouth-to-mouth, hook him to the electronics, but Dad is gone. They don’t pronounce him dead before placing him in the ambulance, but that’s for my benefit. The cops cuff Rich, dragging him away; Chris Coughlin runs in circles, Mott stands silent on the edge of the court.

WHALE TALK

The road between Cutter and New Meadows, Idaho, is mostly two-lane. Once you get through Spokane and cut south, the traffic is light during the middle of the week, though it’s the only direct route between eastern Washington and southern Idaho. On a BMW cycle, staying within five or ten miles per hour of the speed limit, it’s about a six-and-a-half-hour trip.

I pull into town from the north, pass the Pine Knot, which, from the outside, looks a lot like my father described it. At the intersection I turn right and cruise slowly down Main Street, taking in the town of just more than seven hundred people, stretching my imagination back thirty years. It’s not much of a stretch. I see a sign for the cemetery and follow it, pulling the bike over at the gate. I place my helmet carefully on the backseat and walk in, reading the tombstones, looking for the little boy who changed my father’s life.

It’s a simple marker, laid flat in the ground, TYLER COUPLES, next to his dates. He wasn’t quite two. I kneel and run my hand over the ridges of the letters, checking the markers on either side for Stacy. She’s not there.

In the Pine Knot I order a piece of pie and water. It’s early afternoon on a Wednesday, and the place is empty but for the waiter, who is also the cook, who is also, it turns out, the owner.

He places the pie in front of me. “You’re not from around here.”

“Cutter. Up in Washington.”

“What brings you down here?”

“Graduated from high school last spring,” I say. “Taking a little bike trip.”

“You’re taking a bike trip to New Meadows, Idaho?”

I smile. “Listen, does a woman named Stacy Couples live around here? She’d be close to fifty.”

“Stacy moved about eleven years ago,” he says. “Right after her son Kyle graduated. Went to Boise.”

A son. Jesus, that fits with the time my dad and Stacy-“She has a son?”

“Sure does.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

The man points toward the back of the café. “He lives a half block that way. But he’s buying the grocery store, and he runs some boats down the Salmon over in Riggins. Quite the entrepreneur, that Kyle.”

“I’d like to meet him. We might know some people in common.”

“Well, you can find him over at the store about twelve hours a day when he’s not running the river. Bet he’s there now.”

The store is clean and quiet; a checker reads a Stephen King book behind the counter. She glances up to greet me when I walk in and points me toward the produce section when I ask for the owner.

“Kyle Couples?”

“The one and only. What can I do for you?” He’s a big man, dark and fit, somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties.

“I think we may have the same father.”

He looks at me with surprise. “Excuse me?”

My ethnicity hasn’t occurred to me. “Not biological,” I say. “I’m adopted.”

When he’s past the shock, and I have a chance to tell him how I think we’re related, Kyle invites me to his upstairs office. The walls are decorated with pictures of him on different motorcycles, most of them Harleys, all of them classic. Behind his cluttered desk is a blown-up photo of a huge gray whale diving.

“You like bikes,” I say.

“I love bikes,” he says back.

“And whales.”

He smiles sheepishly. “Always had a thing for ’em. Don’t know why. The year I graduated from high school, I took a bike trip to the coast, just south and west of Seattle. Went on a boat tour, got close enough for me to get that shot. I don’t know. Just something about ’em. They have a kind of…majesty.”

I stare at the picture. How in the world…? They didn’t know each other a day, and yet… “Your mom lives in Boise?”

He looks away. “How’d you know that?”

“The guy at the Pine Knot. You talk to her much?”

“I don’t talk to her at all,” he says.

I back off, give him time to tell me.

“She just never really accepted me,” he says finally. “I mean, hell, who could blame her? First time with a man after her husband is killed, and it ends in her kid getting killed and all kinds of shame for getting pregnant. I’ve heard stories about my mother, about how cool she was before I was born, before she lost her husband, before your dad…before Tyler got killed. But that wasn’t the mom I ever knew. She was just absent. My aunt and uncle raised me, really. I lived with Mom and all, but by the time I was in second grade, I spent as little time there as I could.”