And then it wasn’t just a way to pass the time: I was wanting to tell him something about what was happening, to wake him up and tell him to take advantage, dammit! Even if it meant popping him in the nose like the guy in Rocky Ford. So I repeated, “Forty thousand feet!” He nodded at me again.) Lee begins to wonder if Hank is going to bring up the subject of choker-setting at all. (I’m a long ways from convinced by that nod, but I go on anyway: “Forty thousand feet!” and hoped; this time he nods like he gets the picture and I go on . . .) “Anyhow...you get to where it’s eighteen inches around and man, here comes the ride. Feel this breeze? Not so much down here, is it? But up there you’re weaving around like a drunk man. You lash yourself on with a couple loops of slack and go to work with the short saw. Zsh zsh zsh... till you feel it start to crack...start to pull ... eck, eckkk....Okay, now, see if you can get this: as that thirty-so feet of top above you cracks and leans, it bends the tree with it . . . till you’re leaned out, oh god, I don’t know, maybe fifteen degrees off vertical is all it is but it feels like you’re bent clean parallel with the ground! And when that top finally busts loose, whosh, back you come! And that tree waves you around up there like a football pennant.” (I still knew he wasn’t getting any notion of it—the feeling, the charge a man gets rigging a tree . . .) Lee tries to step into the pause, starting to say something about his own particular morning in the woods. “I could have used a little of that wind down here. ...Look.” He pulls his soaked shirt from his chest with a thumb and finger. “You wouldn’t have thought a Yale man had this much juice in him, would you? God. Whoever that fellow on the other choke chain was, he gave me quite a workout.” And glances hopefully up at his brother . . . (So I ask myself: how can I show him? how can I give him some notion? how can I snap him outa that fog without getting in some hassle with him?) When Hank makes no comment Lee lifts a pant leg to show a lump on his shin like a blue egg. He touches it with his fingers, grimacing broadly. “There was a moment, just after I acquired this little gem, when I’ll have to admit I was just the teeniest bit tempted to chuck the whole business, chain and all, and let him have it. ‘You’ve managed to break your leg,’ I said to myself. ‘Do you want to try for a compound fracture just to keep ahead of that other fellow?’ Owee—” He blows on the wound. “Wowee, I’ll bet that’s a pretty color tonight. . . . See?” “What?” “Here...” His attention drawn, Hank acknowledges the bruise with a preoccupied grin, but says nothing; the jay calls distractedly as Lee inspects the bruise on his shin . . . When the day was half over I was sincerely a little proud of my stamina, and actually expecting Brother Hank to give some small praise. Then suddenly Hank looks up from Lee’s leg, snapping his fingers. (And then it came to me...) “Hey! I’ll show you want I mean, bub; look here.” (I hold out both my hands for him to see. As usual after topping I was all bunged to hell, raw and bleeding, and the gimp hand was swole across the knuckles like a piece of raw corned beef.) “See? that’s what I mean: I was for chrissakes halfthe-damn-way up that sonofabitch before I remember, sonofagun! no gloves! Halfway up. See what I’m drivin’ at, now?” Lee lets the pant leg drop and stares at the extended hands. The nausea that he felt after the noon whistle clamps again on his full stomach, but he fights it back. But quite the opposite of praise, I received a rundown of all the extra jobs Hank had completed while waiting for me to catch up . . . “You see what I’m driving at, bub?” Hank repeats his question and Lee forces himself to meet his brother’s eyes. “Yes, I believe I see what you’re driving at,” he answers, trying to keep the burning in his nose and throat from coming through in his voice. (And when I ask him that he looks up at me really for the first  time since he’s come home and says, “Yes, I see.” And for the first time since he’s come home I think by god we’re getting someplace. I think, He ain’t completely lost to us, after all. College or no, we can still find ways of making contact. I think, Yessir! we still got a lot going. Joby and Jan was full of beans. Me and the kid’s gonna hit it off just fine.) And the folly of my first half-day swept over me: He’ll always be running ahead for me to catch up. He keeps changing the rules for the run, or the run itself. He’s either running twelve years ahead of me, or the other direction, or claiming to be in a different race from what I am altogether. He challenges me to setting chokers, then after I’ve half killed myself informs me that he’s been climbing trees. ...He will never give me the chance! The whistle on the donkey shrills a quick shave-and-a-haircut, and Hank takes his watch from his pocket. “Hell. It’s goin’............