‘Why, hello Joe,’ she said. She seemed surprised. She smiled up at me and did not look at the man who was in the room with her. ‘I guess you didn’t work today.’ She moved her hand toward the man to point him out. ‘This is Mr Miller. This is my son, Joe Brinson, Warren.’
‘I already know Joe,’ the man said. He stepped toward me with his hand out, and I saw that he had a limp in his leg, not a bad one, just a limp that made him pull to one side the way it would if one leg was shorter than the other. It was his left leg he limped toward, and it did not seem to hurt him because he smiled when he shook my hand. He was a tall, bulky man who wore glasses, and he was older than my father — fifty maybe. His hair was thin and combed straight back on his head. He looked like someone I’d seen before but couldn’t remember. I didn’t think I’d ever heard his name. Warren Miller.
When Warren Miller had my hand in his own big hand, he held it for a moment as though he wanted me to know he meant it. His skin was warm and he had a big ring on, a gold ring with a red stone. He was wearing shiny black cowboy boots.
‘I’m happy to see you, son,’ he said. I could smell him, smell something like tobacco and hair oil on his clothes.
‘I’m happy to see you,’ I said.
‘Where do you know Joe from?’ my mother said, still smiling. She looked at me and winked.
‘I know his father,’ Warren Miller said. He stood back and put his hands on his hips so that his coat pushed back and showed his big chest. His skin was very pale and he was over six feet. He seemed to be inspecting me. ‘His father’s a hell of a golfer. I played with him at the Wheatland Club on two occasions, and he parted us all from our money. Joe was there waiting for him.’
‘Do you remember that time, Joe?’ my mother said.
‘Yes,’ I said. But I didn’t remember. Warren Miller was looking at me as though he knew I didn’t remember.
‘Now your father’s out fighting this fire, is that right?’ Warren Miller said. He smiled as if there was something he liked about that. He kept his big hands on his hips.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he is.’
‘That’s what he told us,’ my mother said.
‘Well. That’s wonderful,’ Warren Miller said. ‘That’s very good. Do you wish you could go out and fight it yourself? You probably do.’
‘Yes sir,’ I said.
‘I think he actually does, Warren, as crazy as it seems,’ my mother said, still seated, looking up at us. ‘He and his dad think alike about most things these days.’
‘There’s not enough around to kill us, I guess,’ Warren Miller said. ‘I’ve felt that way. Men understand that.’
‘Men don’t understand much,’ my mother said. ‘It’s not their long suit. They don’t wake up crying, either. Women take care of that.’
‘I never heard that before,’ Warren Miller said, ‘have you, Joe? I’ve waked up crying plenty of times. Songjin was a place I did that.’ He looked around at my mother. I think he wanted to say something more about this subject, but all he said was, ‘Korea.’
‘Warren’s borrowing a book from me, Joe,’ my mother said, and she got up. ‘I’ll go get it right now.’ She went back into the bedroom. She kept her books stacked on the floor of the closet behind her shoes.
‘That’s correct,’ Warren Miller said, and I guess he was talking about the book then. He looked back at me. ‘Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing just to know you’re alive,’ he said, but in a soft voice, a voice I didn’t think he wanted my mother to hear.
‘I understand,’ I said, because I did understand that. I thought it was what my father had been talking about the night before, standing in the dark waiting to get on the bus.
‘Everybody doesn’t know that,’ Warren Miller said. ‘I can guarantee you that much.’ He reached down in his pants pocket and came up with something he held in his big hand. ‘Let me give you a present, Joe,’ he said. When he opened his hand there was a small knife in it, a slender clasp knife made of silver. On the side of the case in tiny blocked letters, it said BURMA-1943. ‘Some trouble isn’t worth getting into, though,’ he said. ‘This’ll remind you which to choose.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. I took the knife, which was warm and hard and heavier than I thought it would be. I felt for a moment that I shouldn’t be taking it. Only I wanted it, and I liked Warren Miller for giving it to me. I knew he would not tell my mother about it, and neither would I.
‘People do everything eventually, I guess,’ I heard my mother say from the other room. I heard the closet door close and her footsteps on the floor. She appeared in the door to the hall. ‘Did you hear what I said?’ She had a small book in her hand, and she was smiling. ‘Are you two plotting against me?’ she said.
‘We’re shooting the breeze,’ Warren Miller said. I let the silver knife slip into my pocket.
‘I hope so,’ my mother said. ‘Here.’ She held the book out to him. ‘From my private library. Ex Libris Jeanette,’ she said.
‘What is it?’ Warren Miller said. He took the book and looked at its cover, which was dark blue.
‘It’s what you asked me for,’ my mother said. ‘The selected poems of William Wordsworth. “Getting and spending we lay waste all our powers.” That’s what I remember.’
‘I remember that,’ Warren Miller said. He held the book in both his hands and looked down at the cover.
‘I taught Mr Miller how to swim recently,’ my mother said. ‘Now he’d like to learn to read poetry.’ She smiled at him and sat back down in her armchair. ‘He’s going to give me a job in his grain elevator, too,’ she said.
‘I am,’ Warren Miller said. ‘That’s right.’
‘Mr Miller owns a grain elevator,’ my mother said. ‘He has three of them, actually. I bet you’ve seen them, sweetheart.’ She looked around toward the back of our house and pointed her arm over behind her head. ‘They’re across the river. Those big white ones. They’re what we have as a skyline out here. They’re probably full of oats, like Warren.’
‘What is in them.’ I asked.
‘Wheat,’ Warren Miller said. ‘Though this isn’t a good year for it. It’s too hot.’
‘It’s too dry,’ my mother said, ‘in case we didn’t notice. That’s why we have big fires now.’
‘That’s correct,’ Warren Miller said, and he looked uncomfortable. He kept the slender book in one hand and moved closer to the front door. It gave me an odd feeling that he was here, and that he was in his fifties and knew my mother. I tried to think about him wearing a bathing suit. ‘I’ve got to see a man about a dog,’ he said. He put his hand with the big gold and red ring on my shoulder. I could feel it on my shoulder bone. ‘I’m glad I saw you, Joe,’ he said.
‘I’m glad you did, too,’ my mother said. She didn’t get up. She seemed strange, as if something had affected her and she wanted to pretend it hadn’t.
‘Come to see me tomorrow, Jeanette. All right?’ Warren Miller said. He limped when he moved toward the door.
‘All right,’ my mother said, ‘I will. Joe, open the door for Mr Miller.’
And I did that, with my school books in my hand and the silver knife he had given me in my pocket.
‘I hope I’ll see you again,’ Warren Miller said to me.
‘You probably will,’ my mother said.
We watched Warren Miller as he limped down our front steps and out past the wooden gate to his Oldsmobile, parked in the dry leaves across the street.