Go with her, Galen, his mother said. So he hoofed it after her, trying to catch up. Around the deck and past the small toolshed. She was wearing pale green pants the color of the cabin, a brown blouse, stepping smartly. She stopped and bent down at exactly the right spot, reached into the bushes, removed a loose piece of bark, and turned the faucet that was hidden there.

You knew right where that was, Galen said.

Of course I did. Go around front and open the spigot. Let the water run until it’s clear.

Aye, aye, he said, and walked back down.

Where’s Mom? his mother asked.

She asked me to turn on the spigot.

Don’t leave her alone.

I’m turning on the spigot. He stepped past the car to the pine tree he’d leaned his lance against. A tall spigot hiding behind it, and he turned it all the way open and water rushed out, a bit dark at first but then clearing. He grabbed some with his palm, icy cold, and had a drink. Nice, he said. Then he turned the spigot off.

His mother unlocking the storm door, his grandmother giving directions. The mafia standing by on the deck, watching with their arms folded. Galen felt almost bad for them for a moment, always on the sidelines. But that was just the order of things. Galen and his mother were first, and they were second, and that was just the way it was. It couldn’t be changed.

Galen grabbed his duffel from the trunk. The cabin open now, and his mother unhooking storm shutters over the windows, but his grandmother had wandered inside. He followed her into darkness.

A closed-in smell, an entire winter. Smoke more than anything else, from the cast-iron stove in the kitchen. But other smells, also, of old wood and blankets, newspapers and kindling, mothballs. He loved this place, loved it more than any other.

His grandmother always went to the kitchen first. Galen followed, just in time to see the light come in as his mother opened the storm shutters from outside. His grandmother standing at the stove with her hands resting on it, looking down, remembering? He watched her being made in the pale light, created for the first time.

Her face older than he had realized, lines in arcs down her cheeks. Her eyes hooded. She was leaning over the stove as if she might collapse upon it, but then she straightened up and ran her palms over the round iron plates. She turned her face away.

Galen felt he was intruding, so he ducked up the narrow staircase, dragging his duffel. Darkness again, and he put his hand out to find one slim bed and then the other, stepped into the small aisle between and swung his duffel onto the bed on the left. Then he lay down, the bumpy old mattress. This was where he could think. He’d lain right here for hours each summer, throughout his life, dreaming of what might be. It was here that everything could be reviewed and here that who he was could be known. Only this place right here.

The bad thing, of course, was that it had to be shared with his mother. Galen could hear his mother and aunt arguing below about the sleeping arrangements, so he felt in the duffel for his tape recorder and earphones and listened to Kitaro’s Silk Road.

He could feel his breathing calm and all the stress leave his body. So much stress, always more than he was aware of until he washed up on Kitaro’s shore. Here he could spread his arms wide and he could fly.

But then the light turned on. His mother, wrecking everything.

I’m listening to Kitaro, he hissed.

I can’t fight everybody, she said. I don’t have the energy.

Galen reached over and turned off the lamp, but she turned it on again. She had a small suitcase on the floor and was moving her clothing into the drawers of the narrow dresser between their beds. We’re having our picnic now, she said. Up at the big rock.

I’m not hungry.

Then you’ll just watch us eat.

Galen hit rewind, the old recorder squealing. He needed a Walkman. But of course there was no money for a Walkman. He hit play and was back on the Silk Road, his eyes closed.

Galen relaxed again, waited for the light to turn off and his mother to leave, and lying here in the cabin on this old mattress in the dark he had the sense that he was destined for something. The shape of his life might include greatness of some sort, though it was too early to tell what that might be. He could feel the expansiveness of his spirit, the way it emanated from his chest and filled the entire room. But he couldn’t really focus, because they were all walking up to the big rock now, and that was a nagging that pulled at him. He should just not go, but somehow it was not possible to not go. His mother a constant disruption, a tearing in the fabric of space and time. There could be no peace when she was near.

Galen slammed the stop button on the recorder and took off the earphones. Then down the steep stairs.

The big metal stew pot on the stove, and that was one thing Galen was looking forward to, the chicken and dumplings. That was a meal he would eat, a break each year from being a vegetarian.

He stood at the stove like his grandmother had, placed his hands where hers had been, wondered what she’d been thinking or remembering. Her own psychic space, where all the different times came together. Her children young, her husband still alive, her mind still intact. Could she remember that? Can a broken mind remember when it was well?

Galen turned his head away, as his grandmother had done, and ran his hands over the round cast-iron burners that could be lifted to poke at the coals. Black iron with chrome along the edges. The chrome tarnished but still beautiful, ornate curls and leaf patterns. A high back around a black stovepipe. The heft and solidity of the thing. Its presence in this small room and in their lives. Manifested by us, Galen said, his voice low. Brought into this incarnation as a signpost, a gathering point. I honor you, old stove. He closed his eyes and, ducking his head slightly, bowing, breathed out a long exhale.

The big rock another gathering point. He didn’t want to see his family, but he did want to see the rock again, so he stepped out the back door, across the deck and into pine needles, then up the path to the meadow. Only a sprinkle of grass, bright green shoots in an open clearing, sunny. A break from the shade of the trees. And partway up the meadow, tucked into the left side, a large boulder taller than a person, very wide and set into the ground. A kind of lumpy pancake in layers of granite. Moss-covered in the lower shaded parts, the alcoves and overhangs. A few small ferns. Spotted with yellow blooms of lichen on top. Old skin of the rock. Jennifer perched in the place he liked to sit. She knew that was his place.

His aunt and mother and grandmother all sitting on the ground, leaning back against the rock. Mother and grandmother on one side of the picnic basket, aunt on the other. Red-checked cloth set out with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, deviled eggs, pickles, potato chips.

My handsome grandson.

Galen tried to smile but found his face unresponsive.

Have a deviled egg, she said, as if she’d made them herself.

Thank you, Grandma, he said, and picked up a deviled egg, then climbed the rock to sit beside Jennifer. She’d taken the one smooth saddle in the top, the natural seat. She was staring ahead into space, crunching potato chips.

Galen closed his eyes and tried to calm, but he could hear everyone chewing. His mother biting into a dill pickle, unbelievably loud, his aunt chugging some orange soda, his grandmother gumming away at her sandwich making little smacking sounds. Jennifer with her potato chips that sounded like trees splitting. He hated human chewing and swallowing. He tried to focus on bees circling around in the wildflowers, and the sound of the creek not far away, a light breeze in the treetops farther up the hill, or even the cars passing on the highway, muffled by the forest. But all he could really hear were the wet sounds of tongues and gums and throats.