Gail threw the umbrella in a corner, and they passed through the dining room, which had the same sort of furniture, and into the big kitchen, a blend of original country kitchen and 1950s updates. Keith put the wine on the counter, and Gail took the bottles out of the bag. "Oh, apple wine and spiked grape juice! I love it!"

"Kind of a joke. But there's a good Chianti, too. Remember Julio's, the little Italian place near campus?"

"How could I forget? Bad spaghetti before it was called pasta, checkered tablecloths, and melted candles stuck in straw-covered Chianti bottles — what happened to the straw?"

"Good question."

She put the apple and grape wine in the refrigerator and gave Keith a corkscrew to open the Chianti. She found two wineglasses, and he poured. They touched glasses, and she toasted, "To Bowling Green."

"Cheers."

She said, "Jeffrey is out back, gathering herbs."

Keith saw a big pot simmering on the stove, and the kitchen table was set for three, with a loaf of dark bread in a basket.

Gail asked, "Did you bring meat for yourself?"

"No, but I looked for roadkill on the way here."

She laughed. "Disgusting."

He asked her, "Do you like it here?"

She shrugged. "It's all right. Quiet. Plenty of empty farmhouses at rents we can afford. And Jeffrey's people are still here, and he's been doing his memory-lane thing for the last two years. I come from Fort Recovery, so it's not much different. How about you? You okay here?"

"So far."

"Nostalgic? Sad? Bored? Happy?"

"All of the above. I have to sort it out."

Gail filled their glasses again and poured one for Jeffrey. "Come on outside. I want to show you our gardens."

They walked out the back door, and Gail called out, "Company!"

About fifty yards away in a garden, Keith saw Jeffrey stand up and wave. He came toward them wearing baggy shorts and a T-shirt, carrying a wicker basket piled with vegetation that Keith hoped was weeds destined for the garbage can and not something he was supposed to eat.

Jeffrey wiped his hand on his shorts and extended it to Keith.

"Good to see you."

Keith asked, "You made it home all right?"

"Sure." He took his glass of wine from Gail and said, "I'm becoming a juicehead in my old age. We only do grass on special occasions."

Gail added, "We put on oldies, turn out the lights, get naked, get high, and fuck."

Keith didn't comment but looked around the yard. "Good gardens." Jeffrey replied, "Yeah, we've got use of four acres and all the corn we can steal from the fields. Thank God this guy grows sweet corn, or we'd be eating cattle feed."

Keith looked out over the acres of gardens. This was more kitchen garden than the average farmer kept, and he figured that the Porters depended on this for much of their food. He stopped feeling sorry for himself with his adequate government pension and his family-owned acres.

Jeffrey said, "Come on, we'll show you around."

They toured the garden plots. There was a plot devoted entirely to root vegetables, another with vine vegetables such as tomatoes and squash, and another garden was planted with more varieties of beans than Keith knew existed. The most interesting thing was the herb gardens, the likes of which were rarely seen in Spencer County. There was a culinary herb garden with over forty different varieties, and also what Jeffrey called "a garden of historical and medicinal herbs," plus a garden of herbs used for dyes and miscellaneous household needs such as soap and cologne. And beyond the gardens, stretching out to where the cornfield began, was a profusion of wildflowers that had no use at all except to please the eye and ease the mind. "Very nice," Keith said.

Gail said, "I make perfume, potpourri, tea, hand lotion, bath scents, that sort of thing."

"Anything to smoke?"

Jeffrey laughed. "God, I wish we could. Can't risk it here."

Gail said, "I think we could, but Jeffrey is chicken."

Jeffrey defended himself. "The county sheriff is a little brighter than the Spencerville police chief, and he's keeping an eye on us. He thinks all this stuff is psychedelic."

Gail said, "Oh, Jeffrey, you have to treat the fuzz the way you grow mushrooms — keep them in the dark and feed them shit."

They all laughed.

Jeffrey said, apropos of the subject, "I have a source in Antioch. I make a run about once a month." He added, "I just made a run." He winked at Keith.

It was almost dark now, and they went inside. Gail put the herbs in a colander and washed them while Jeffrey stirred the contents of the pot, which looked like stew sans meat. Gail poured some of the Chianti into the pot and added the herbs. "Let that simmer awhile."

Keith had a strange feeling of deja vu, then recalled his first dinner with Jeffrey and Gail in their little apartment off campus. Not much had changed.

Gail poured the remainder of the Chianti into their glasses and said to Keith, "You probably think we're stuck in the sixties."

"No." Yes.

"Actually, we're selectively sixties people. There's good and bad in each era, each decade. We've totally rejected the new feminism, for instance, in favor of the old feminism. Yet we've adopted the new radical ecology."

Keith remarked dryly, "That's very astute."

Jeffrey laughed. "Same old wiseass."

Gail smiled. "We're weird."

Keith felt compelled to say something nice to his hosts, and offered, "I think we can be as weird as we want to be. We've earned it."

"You said it," Jeffrey agreed.

Keith continued, "And you've put your money where your mouth is by resigning as a matter of principle."

Gail nodded. "Partly principle. Partly, we felt uncomfortable there. Two old radicals who got laughed at behind our backs." She added, "These kids have no heroes, and we were heroes. Heroes of the revolution. But the kids think the history of the world began on their birthdays."

Jeffrey said, "Well, it wasn't that bad. But professionally we felt unfulfilled."

Keith pointed out, "That's not exactly what you said last night."

"Yeah, well, I was drunk last night." He thought a moment, then confessed, "But maybe I was closer to the truth last night. Anyway, here we are, tutoring high school dull normals."

Gail said to Keith, "Jeffrey tells me you were sacked."

"Yes, and none too soon."

"Were they laughing at you?"

"No, I don't think so. Old warriors are still honored within the imperialist military-intelligence community."

"Then why were you sacked?" Gail asked.

"Budget cuts, end of the Cold War... no, that's not the whole truth. I was sacked because I was tottering between burnout and epiphany. They can smell that a mile away, and they don't like either." He thought a moment and said, "I was starting to ask questions."

"Such as?"

"Well... I was at a White House briefing once... I was there to give answers, not ask questions." Keith smiled at the memory of what he was about to relate "...and I asked the secretary of state, 'Sir, could you explain to me this country's foreign policy, if any, so that I can figure out what you want?' " Keith added, "Well, you could have heard a pink slip drop in the room."

Jeffrey inquired, "Did he explain it to you?"

"Actually, he was polite enough to do so. I still didn't get it. Six months later, I got a letter on my desk explaining budget cuts and the joys of early retirement. There was a place for my signature. I signed."

They sipped their wine, Jeffrey turned his attention to the stew, which he stirred, and Gail took a platter of raw vegetables and bean dip out of the refrigerator and put it on the counter. They all nibbled on the vegetables.

Jeffrey said finally, "Sounds as if you resigned on principle, too."

"No, I was asked to accept an early retirement for budget reasons. That's what the press release and the internal memo said. So that's the way it was." Keith added, "My job was to discover objective truths, but the truth needs two people to make it work — the speaker and the listener. The listeners weren't listening. In fact, in the last two decades, they rarely did, but it took me a while to figure it out." He thought a moment, then said, "I'm happy to be out of there."