That shuts her up. But only for a minute. She walks around the ladder and cranes her neck like a snapping turtle, looking up at him. "Daddy, you haven't forgotten, have you? About selling the house?"

Howard was a lawyer for forty-five years; he knows a trick question when he hears one. The old "Have you stopped beating our wife yet?" tactic. If he says he doesn't remember, then he's a senile old fool. If he says he remembers….

"Doesn't matter whose damn house it is," he shouts. "If the old paint's coming off, new paint's got to go on! Christ, Martha, it's a simple matter of logic."

He gets at the scraping again and ignores he until she goes away. Fuss-budget! A man could lose his marbles with people nattering away at him like that. Thinks he can't heat up soup. Thinks he can't take care of his house. Hell, he could have built this house. Pretty near did, it was such a wreck when he bought it. He let Alice see it once, in that ramshackle state, and then he wouldn't let her come near until it was fixed the way it should be. The day he finally showed her around, they stood in their empty bedroom, in the smell of paint, and kissed and cuddled until she made him stop.

He got the house done just a week before the wedding. Springtime, like it should be. Alice had flowers in her hair—when did brides stop doing that, anyway? Real flowers, apple blossoms from the Willis's orchard - where that abomination, Apple Tree Estates, is now. There were apple blossoms everywhere: the bridesmaids carried bunches of them, and little Emily came first, scattering them for the bride to walk on. The patch he's scraping begins to look like a tree. Twisty, like an old apple tree, with a wide, white top. He scrapes away at the edges of the cloud head, giving the tree more and more blossoms. People threw blossoms at them, too, and rice, of course. They ducked out of the church and ran together through the falling white, the blossoms fluttering, the rice like sleet. Then they walked right up the road to their new house, with all their guests behind them.

Howard climbs down three steps, moves the ladder, climbs back up. Red paint flakes away from his scraper. He's feeling a little hungry now, but hell, the house won't wait. He can probably finish up to the corner before lunch. Here's a patch that looks like the state of Illinois. If he could get it wider, it would look like Ohio, where Janey lives. A couple boards down there's a patch that looks like Georgia. Pete's there, in the peach state. The Pete state. He ought to go see the kids, take a trip. Alice used to arrange things like that. It isn't natural for a family to live so scattered about. Of course, there's Martha, she sticks around, God knows. And Fred's handy—in the cemetery, with Alice. Howard looks down the road to the white church and the graveyard. He doesn't even remember what the Korean War was about. He bets nobody else does, either. Damn Truman, anyway.