‘So you’ve got help—and you’ve got talent. And better than that, you’ve got God. God is on your side, Sam, because he loves you. Why does he love you, why does he love me? We can’t fully understand it, but that’s what God does, no matter how stupid or crazy we are, God loves us anyway. He wants the best for us, anyway. You steal my car and wreck it, I love you anyway. Do something like that again, I’ll love you anyway, and I’ll also do this: I’ll press charges, and it won’t be good.

‘The party’s over, Sam.’

He laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder, felt the flinch.

‘But the fun is just beginning. Let’s go in and buy a tree.’

•   •   •

HIS MAMA HAD NOT EATEN a bite in three days.

‘You want a nanner?’ he’d say. ‘Hit’s ripe.’ Good as she loved ripe bananas, she’d shake her head no. ‘Read me out of that book,’ she’d say with the hoarse sound she’d picked up lately.

He’d got home before dark after going over town for a special treat. Maybe that would do the job. He stomped snow off his boots and hung up his jacket on a nail by the door.

Things was peaceful as water in a spoon. The oil heater was goin’ and the TV wadn’t blarin’ a’tall.

‘Miz Ivey sent you a jelly donut, hit’s blueberry, you want it?’

‘Nossir, you eat it y’rself. Read me out of that book.’

He took the book off the mantelpiece and showed her the cover. To keep things new every time, they played like they had not done this before.

‘C-A-T,’ he spelled out. ‘Cat! There’s th’ cat.’

‘In a hat,’ she said, beating him to it.

What he did was go by the pictures and make it up out of his head with what he remembered from his teacher Miss Mooney.

He sat down in his chair. ‘Th’ sun . . . did not . . .’ He hesitated, studied the word. ‘. . . sh-h-h . . . shine . . .’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. She crossed her arms over her sunken chest and closed her eyes. ‘Th’ sun don’t shine of a night.’

‘It was too wet . . . to plow. Wait a minute. To play!’

‘That’s right. Too wet.’

‘Hit was stormin’ pretty bad an’ we had to set in th’ house.’

‘Set in th’ house,’ she said. ‘That’s right.’

‘They won’t nothin’ to do but set.’

He held the book close so she could see the picture of two young ’uns settin’, but her eyes were shut tight as a henhouse door.

‘I remember back when Mama was livin’,’ she said.

The icy rain began. Patpatpatpat . . .

‘We would set in th’ house an’ wait for th’ rag man, he’d come by hollerin’, Rag man, rag man! We was happy as a dog with two tails to see ’im, he was a little bitty man with a black mustache. He give us money for rags an’ with nine young ’uns in the’ house we had a-plenty to sell—thirty-cent, forty-cent worth ’bout near ever’ time.’

Look like all that talkin’ had wore her out. He hurried to a page where things was goin’ on, where them big letters bunched together to make a loud word.

‘Then somethin’ went BUMP!’ He jumped when he hollered that word, he couldn’t help hisself.

‘Good gravy!’ His mama opened her eyes. ‘What was that?’

‘He’s comin’ in now! He’s steppin’ on th’ mat, he’s comin’ in th’ house!’ He had goose bumps all up his right leg.

‘Who’s comin’ in th’ house?’

‘Th’ CAT! An’ here’s what he says.’ He ’bout near remembered this word for word. ‘Says we gon’ have lots of fun that is funny.’ Yessir, he was gettin’ the hang of this.

‘Fun that is funny. I sure like that,’ she said. ‘Keep a-goin’.’

He thought she sounded tired, real tired.

‘Now here in a little bit, th’ cat is throwin’ a fish up in th’ air. Ol’ fish hollers out, says, Put me down, I do not want to fall. An’ th’ cat, he says, I ain’t gon’ let you fall!’

Patpatpatpat . . .

‘You ain’t gon’ let me fall, are ye, son?’

He was startled by this, by the way she was breathing. ‘No, ma’am, I ain’t. Not for nothin’.’

She was needin’ a little pick-me-up, he could tell. ‘You want you a dip?’ He moved her walker and got in next to her bed and looked on her night table for the snuff jar. A little dip always perked her up.

Her hands was crossed over her chest, her eyes closed, her breathing had calmed down. ‘I’ve got all I want of ever’thing. You’re a good son.’

His heart flopped around. She’d never said nothin’ like that before. He didn’t know what to answer back.

Nossir, she was not actin’ like Beulah Mae Hendrick. She had to eat a bite, even if he had to call the neighbor woman to make her do it.

He went to the kitchen and gobbled the donut in three bites and made a bowl of hot oatmeal with sugar and the last of the milk and listened to the rain chiming in the downspout. They said over town it might turn to ice by mornin’. He cocked his head to hear it better, cupped his hand about his ear. It was as good as any music on the radio.

‘Mama!’ he said, carrying the warm bowl to her bed. ‘Looky here.’

Her mouth was open but she wadn’t snoring. He passed the oatmeal close to her pillow so she could smell it and set up.

But she didn’t set up.

•   •   •

HE REMEMBERED THAT he hadn’t said anything about Sammy’s determination to be himself. That was the very thing they all wanted him to be. He wished he had made that clear.

But he’d said enough. It was time to listen.

He got up from the chair in the study and called Henry. He had the strange sense of missing his brother.

‘I talked to somebody in the doctor’s office, she had acute myelogenous lukemia,’ said Henry. ‘A relative helped with a stem cell transplant. That was five years ago. Now she’s driving a delivery truck, owns a florist business, and went on a trip to Alabama in September. That’s what I’m hoping for. But maybe not Alabama.’ Henry laughed.

‘Maybe North Carolina.’ His heart galloped when he said it.

•   •   •

THE SNOW HAD CIRCLED like a plane over Atlanta and come back to land again.

Early in the year for this much snow. It seemed only days ago that the leaves had turned, and now this. He felt the odd sense of captivity that he sometimes experienced in winter, in the mountains.

Eight-thirty. His wife was in bed, reading. He watched her squint at the page, but said nothing.

He had an appointment with the truck guy in Hendersonville on Tuesday. Harley knew something about buying trucks. All he, Timothy, knew to do was to kick the tires and walk around the vehicle, looking stern, which was his Grandfather Kavanagh’s style.

He didn’t recognize the caller ID.

‘Father, I’m the Hendricks’ neighbor, Jenny Thomas.’

‘Good evening, Jenny.’

‘Miz Hendrick passed a little while ago and Coot is asking for you. He’s devastated. I know the roads are bad, I doubt you can get here, but perhaps you could give me some pointers. I’m a caregiver for forty-two years, but consoling the bereaved is . . . I do other things much better.’

‘Let me think about this, Miss Thomas. I’ll call you back right away.’

No way was he taking his wife’s car out in this. Route 4 was three-plus miles outside the town limits. The county would be plowing that area, but not the side roads.

He rang Esther Cunningham.

‘I’ll get right on it and call you back.’ He could hear her adrenaline pumping.

Completely confident that Esther would come through, he dressed in roughly three layers, including a hooded, oiled jacket from his first Ireland trip. But it would be the boots that mattered.

•   •   •

JIMMY PRESTWOOD BRAKED A PLOW at the corner of Wisteria and Main. He clambered in. ‘Special order just for you, Reverend. From th’ gov’nor, they said.’

At the highway, they connected with a county truck.

‘Supervisor said pick you up. Where you goin’?’

‘Route 4, Brush Mountain Road, third house off the highway.’

‘I can’t take my plow down in there.’

‘I’ll walk in.’

‘This is some kind of weather for October. They already got three inches in Banner Elk and more comin’. You got a light to see by?’