Solid and certain as a rock; one rule I was gut-sure I could bank on. Yet it took nothing more than my kid brother coming to spend a month with us to show me that there are other ways of winning—like winning by giving in, by being soft, by not gritting your goddamn teeth and getting your best hold ...winning by not, for damned sure, being one of the Ten Toughest Hombres west of the Rockies. And show me as well that there’s times when the only way you can win is by being weak, by losing, by doing your worst instead of your best. And learning that come near to doing me in. When I climbed out of that cold water into the boat and saw that the skinny boy in specs was none other than Leland Stamper—fumbling and mumbling and flustered with the running of the boat and no more capable than he ever was when it came to handling any machinery bigger than a wristwatch—I was plenty tickled. Truth. And plenty pleased and surprised too, though I didn’t let on. I said some dumb thing or other, than just went on sitting there, cool and matter-of-fact, like him being out here in the middle of the Wakonda Auga where nobody’d seen him for a good dozen years was just the most ordinary old thing that had happened all day to me—like, if anything, I was a little disappointed, maybe, that he hadn’t been there yesterday or the day before. I don’t know why. Not for any real meanness. But I never been one to carry on about things like homecomings, and I guess I said what I did because I was uneasy and wanted to devil him some, the way I devil Viv when she starts getting soapy and makes me uneasy. But I see from his face that it hits him wrong, and that I’d got to him a lot more than I’d intended. I’d done a lot of thinking about Lee in the last year, remembering him the way he was at four and five and six. Partly, I imagine, because the news of his mom got me thinking about the old days, but some because he was the only little kid I’ve ever been around and there’d be lots of times when I’d think, That’s what our kid’d been like now. That’s what our kid’d be saying now. And in some ways he was good to compare to, in some ways not. He always had a lot of savvy but never much sense; by the time he started school he knew his multiplication tables all the way to the sevens, but never was able to figure why three touchdowns come to twenty-one points if a team kicked all their conversions, though I took him to ball games till the world looked level. I remember—let’s see, I guess when he was nine or ten or so—I tried to teach him to throw jump passes. I’d run out and he’d pass. He wasn’t none too bad an arm, either, and I figured he should make somebody a good little quarterback someday if he would get his butt in gear to match his brains; but after ten or fifteen minutes he’d get disgusted and say, “It’s a stupid game anyway; I don’t care if I ever learn to pass.” And I’d say, “Okay, look here: you’re quarterbacking the Green Bay Packers. It’s fourth down and three in the third quarter, fourth, and three, and you’re behind, nineteen to ten, a quarter to go. You’re on their thirty. Okay ...what do you do?” He’d shuffle around, looking around, looking at the ball. “I don’t know. I don’t care.” “You’d go for the three-point field goal, nutty, and why don’t you care?” “I just don’t is all.” “Don’t you want your team to get the league championship? You need that field goal three points. Then, see, after the field goal you got a chance to pick up the six and one and put you out ahead nineteen to twenty.” “No, I don’t.” “Don’t?” “Care if they win the league championship. None at all.” And I’d finally get pissed. “Okay then, why are you playing if you don’t care?” And he’d walk off from the ball. “I’m not. I never will.” Like that. And it was the same in a lot of other ways. He couldn’t seem to get his teeth into anything. Except books. The things in books was darn near more real to him than the things breathing and eating. That’s why he was so easy to shuck, I guess, because he was just content as you please to accept whatever demon I might happen to trot in—especially if I made it kinda vague. Like . . . well, another thing comes to mind: When he was a little kid he’d always be out on the dock in a life jacket waiting when we come in from work; br............