“That’s about all I can do,” he said and nodded his head toward the table. He watched me pull out my chair and sit down. I picked up a piece of bread and took a bite. He’d put that peanut butter on there thick, and the bread stuck to the roof of my mouth and I had a time swallowing it. I stood up from the table and got me a glass from the cabinet and went to the refrigerator for the milk. I sat my glass on the counter and poured the milk until my glass was full, and then I put the milk back in the refrigerator and carried my glass to the table.

My grandpa flicked his cigarette into the yard and opened the screen door and came inside. He sat down across the table from me. I took another bite of the bread and chewed on it. I could feel him looking at me.

“What grade you in at school?” he asked me.

I swallowed the bread and took a drink of milk. “Third,” I said. I looked over at him and saw that he was still staring at me. I looked down at my plate and took another bite of the bread, and then I laid my right hand open on the tabletop and looked at where that little bit of splinter was still stuck down in my palm. With my other hand I picked up my glass of milk and took a good, long drink, and then I sat it down and scratched my palm with my fingernail and looked for the edge of that splinter to see if I could feel it. Just a little bit of it stuck out, but it wasn’t quite enough to get ahold of.

“What are you doing?” my grandpa asked. I lifted my hand off the table and opened it up like I was waving so he could see it.

“I got a splinter,” I said.

“Why ain’t you pulled it out yet?” he asked me.

“Mama tried,” I said, “but she couldn’t get all of it. She said the rest would work itself out.”

“Good Lord,” he said. He stood up from the table and walked past me and opened one of the cabinets and took down one of Mama’s shiny metal mixing bowls. He went over to the sink and ran water in the tap, and then he picked up the dish soap and squeezed a little bit into the bowl. It looked like he was fixing to wash a bowl that was already clean.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“A trick,” he said. The water from the tap started to steam, and he held the mixing bowl under the faucet and turned the water down to where it was cooler. Suds started bubbling over the top, and he turned off the water and carried the mixing bowl over to the table. He sat it down in front of me.

“This is going to be a little bit hot at first,” he said, “but leave your hand in there and let it soak for a few minutes.”

“Why?”

“Because if you want something to get unstuck, then you have to get it slick first,” he said. “That’s why.”

I got up on my knees in the chair and sat back on my shoes, and when I did I felt something sting me in the butt. I looked behind me at my shoes and then I looked in the chair, but there wasn’t nothing there. I felt around in my back pocket and found that little piece of quartz rock Stump had given me that morning before Mr. Thompson took him inside the church. I sat it on the table beside the mixing bowl.

“What’s that?” my grandpa asked, but I didn’t feel like telling him about it.

“Nothing,” I said.

I put my right hand down inside the mixing bowl, and at first the water was almost too hot for me to keep it in there, but I did, and after a few seconds I was used to it. My grandpa sat down at the table in the chair beside mine.

“How’d you learn how to do this?” I asked him.

“Well,” he said, “if you work with wood long enough you’ll figure out how to fix a splinter pretty quick.”

“Are you a carpenter?” I asked him.

“I ain’t much of anything right now,” he said, “but I’ve been a lot of things. I guess I was one of those at one time.”

I heard him lean back in his chair, and I could feel him watching me. I put my chin down on the table and looked at the side of the mixing bowl. I could see my fuzzy reflection in it, and just beside it I could see my grandpa’s face. The reflection of that quartz rock sat right in between us.

“You look just like your daddy,” he said.

I sat there with my chin on the table, and I stared at his fuzzy reflection. I thought about how I could tell him the same thing.

T

EN

I BRUSHED MY TEETH AND WASHED MY FACE IN THE BATHROOM with the lights out and my grandpa went back out on the front porch. I didn’t like getting ready for bed without Stump. I wanted to see him looking into the mirror beside me, and I wanted to see him brushing his teeth too. I could imagine him standing there, and I could almost feel his elbow touch my arm when he reached out and turned the water off in the sink. I was glad the lights were burned out; it made him easier to see.

But then I thought about him lying on that bed over at Miss Lyle’s house, and then I wondered what Mama and Daddy were doing right then and if they were lying on that bed beside him. I remembered how I saw both of them cry today and just thinking about it made me want to cry too, but I was just too tired to do it.

I walked into the bedroom and turned on the light and looked around. The bed was made up just like me and Stump had left it before we’d gone to church that morning. I kicked off my shoes and reached into my back pocket and pulled out that piece of quartz rock and held it in my hand. It was warm. The shelves Daddy’d made for our rocks were just about full, but I walked over to them anyway and looked for a good place to put Stump’s quartz. I sat it down beside a piece of fool’s gold that we’d found in the creek, but it didn’t seem right to leave it sitting there with all the rocks we’d found together, especially after I’d told him that I’d hold on to it for him.

The closet door was open, and when I looked up at the top shelf I saw Stump’s quiet box. I knew there wasn’t no chance of Mama or Daddy catching me if I got it down and dropped Stump’s quartz rock inside. I figured if Stump was watching me from Heaven, then he probably wouldn’t care one bit if I did.

I looked into the hallway and saw that my grandpa was still out on the porch smoking a cigarette. His back was turned, and he leaned against the railing by the porch like he was waiting for somebody to come driving up to the house. I tiptoed out into the kitchen and picked up one of the chairs at the table and brought it back into our bedroom and sat it in front of the closet. I stood up on top of it and reached up into the closet and took down Stump’s box. I stepped off the chair and sat the box on the bed. Before I opened it I closed the bedroom door and turned out the light. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust, but there was plenty of light from the moon coming in the window. My grandpa coughed outside on the porch.

I lifted the top off the shoe box and saw it was full of folded paper, some rocks, and a couple of sticks, but sitting right on top of all of it was the firefly Christmas ornament that I’d made for Stump. I lifted it out of the shoe box by the paper clip Mama’d wrapped around it to hang it from the Christmas tree, and I wondered what Stump thought about when he looked at the ornament up close; I wondered if he pictured me and him out in the fields chasing fireflies and trying to scoop them up in Mama’s Mason jars, or if he ever opened the quiet box and expected that he might find that firefly glowing. I never knew just what he was thinking, especially when he closed our bedroom door and was all alone with his box, but I hoped that firefly I’d given him made the world quieter for him. I sat the ornament down on the bed and walked over to the shelves and picked up Stump’s quartz rock where I’d left it sitting beside that fool’s gold. I walked back to the box and dropped the rock down inside, and then I picked up the firefly and sat it back inside too. I put the top back on Stump’s quiet box and climbed back up on the chair and put it back on the top shelf where I’d found it. I stared at it for a second, and then I changed my mind. I picked it up again and got down from the chair and slid the quiet box under our bed.