ONE

Harry Stein sits on his front porch, the morning breeze tickling the crap that he’s claiming for hair these days. He’s waiting for Bob the Driver.

Bob the Driver used to be a pharmaceutical salesman. He and his wife retired to Safe Harbor almost 10 years ago; nine years ago, Bob realized he could not live without work.

Now, he drives people between the airport and the eastern end of Long Island’s south fork. Harry’s only problem with Bob the Driver is that he drives the way Harry imagines he used to work—full tilt.

Harry and Bob used to play tennis and drink together. Today, though, Harry is happy to be his passenger. The airport in Islip is not as close as it used to be.

Harry gets up and checks the front door again. He’s had everything turned off. He’s given away half a freezer of food to the Naughtons next door. He’s told them, God help him, that their teenage son can drive the Camry once in a while “to keep the tires from going flat.”

Harry dozes for a few seconds in the warm sun, and Bob the Driver wakes him up with a series of short blasts from the station wagon’s horn as he roars up the driveway.

“Hey, you old goat,” Bob yells. “I thought you were dead. That’d really piss me off, ’cause then you wouldn’t pay me.” Bob’s hard, playful laugh makes Harry smile.

Bob brings the wagon to such an abrupt halt in the sandy yard that dust rises higher than his head as he jumps out and stomps around to the porch. Before Harry can get to his feet, his old friend has grabbed the two largest suitcases. Harry tries to help, bringing the smallest one, but Bob orders him to “just stay there, dammit,” talking to him like a kid, really.

Harry does as he is told, though; he does that a lot lately. All that he is allowed to carry to Bob the Driver’s car is his own diminished body.

These days, Harry accepts a lot of sympathy, even from guys like Bob the Driver, a guy he used to wear out on the tennis courts. But at least Bob remembers him when.

It’s the other ones, when he ventures out from home, who he wishes, just once, could have seen Harry Stein in his prime—tall, slim but not skinny, jet-black hair, dark, smooth complexion, piercing brown eyes. These days, it hurts him to come across pictures from his youth. Wearing his floppy, old-man’s cap, his pants bagging as if they were handed down by a larger, healthier man, he knows he never again will be either flashy or dependable.

“Ready to go?” Bob the Driver asks, starting the car and jerking away already.

Harry nods, frantically searching for the seatbelt.

“Hank!” Her voice from a second-floor window encourages a dog two houses away to start barking. “Do you have that little red suitcase I packed last night?”

Ruth is still giving everything one last look: lights, locks, thermostat, hair. Hank has already taken the car to the garage and had everything possible checked. Now, distracted from his search for the flashlight he’s sure is back there, somewhere, under all the luggage, he emerges and looks up.

“It’s in the trunk, Momma. It must be. Everything else we own is.”

She tells him she’ll be there “in a minute.” Hank stands up straight, stretches and leans against the car. The sun is warm, and it is—give or take a barking dog—quiet.

Finally, understanding that this trip might never start if he lets his mother continue checking and rechecking the already-checked, he sighs and goes upstairs.

It’s already 9 a.m., and Hank hopes to reach Sugar Beach by bedtime. He is (everyone in Saraw knows) a demon driver, capable of sitting behind a steering wheel for six hours at a time, taking a 15-minute break, then driving another six.

Hank would just as soon stay here. He loves fall in the low country. The days are as crisp and blue as the new shirt he bought for the trip; the nights are cool enough for sweaters.

Behind the house, past Ruth’s pumpkin patch, the cornfields have been plowed under, awaiting spring, and six boys are playing a game of tag football in a wide backyard full of still-green grass. It’s a Saturday, and Hank thinks he should be fishing, or maybe painting the old shed, a college football game or a stock car race on the radio. Florida will seem like stepping back into summer.

He climbs the stairs slowly, one step at a time. On the second floor, Ruth is going from room to room. She stops at a door, hands on her hips, stands still for a few seconds, then moves on. There are six bedrooms upstairs, and Hank overtakes her at the last one.

“It’s gonna be dark soon,” he says.

“I know I’m forgetting something, but I can’t think of what it is. I hoped it would jump out at me.”

Hank assures her that anything she’s forgotten probably can be bought in Florida. Finally, she surrenders. She makes sure the stove is turned off, gives the faucet in the kitchen a final twist and at last walks out the front door, which she locks and deadbolts.

Hank says he’ll drive first. He doesn’t add that he will also drive last and always, if he has his way. His mother, for all her accomplishments, is not what he considers interstate rated.

It’s the last day of September, and they’ll be back by the 5th, the day after Ruth’s birthday. “Assuming,” she says, “we can all get along for five days.”

On the way out of town, Hank drives by Mercy’s so that Ruth can leave the house key. Mercy walks out to the car, telling them to “stay put,” then taking the key and wishing them a safe trip. She kisses Hank on the cheek, then walks around and gives Ruth a long hug through the window.

“Say hey to everybody,” she tells her cousin and oldest friend.

They share a smile, a secret one that seems to take in all those years, all those letters.