He took it.
They shook once, firmly, the way men do. Then Ben pulled his uncle to his feet and, to everyone’s astonishment, including his own, wrapped both arms around him and held on.
Dwayne stood rigid for a second. Then he put his big, scarred hands against my son’s back, and bowed his head, and held on, too.
I sat with my sandwich going warm in my lap, and I didn’t look at anybody. I looked at the field, at the long green rows going out to the horizon, the swaths of cut hay curing in the sun, and the line of the old windbreak where the cottonwoods used to stand.
The meadowlark was singing. It was the same one, or its grandchild. The song went up and over the hill, bright and unhurried, as though the whole country had been waiting to hear it.
I took Tom’s notebook out of my pocket. I’d carried it every day for a year. On a fresh page, under the last line he’d written, I put my pencil down and wrote my own.
