HE SAW a blue one at the hardware priced three quarters, knit, like the red hat he wore to think. He didn’t have words for that sort of blue. Blue like the monster on television that ate cookies, eyes on top of its head, blue like the world close to first light, globe ocean blue. He stuffed it to the front of his dark jeans. The store was owned by an old man who was often kind to him, and on the way out he waved at him and the old man waved back. Terry kept his hands in the deep pockets and pushed them forward against the cloth and held the jacket shut at the front metal zipper and the buttonholes over his chest and waist.

When he thought on it, in the afternoon and later again in the night, he felt small, that he led a petty life. But he wore it the next day past dark, and it made his forehead itch, and he scratched at it through the cloth, and when he pulled it off before he slept his hair stood up high one side and mashed on the other, and his forehead was streaked red scratch lines.

Later he woke in the room dark, some pale light from the hall, and he needed water, his tongue bound at his teeth and the roof of his mouth, his eyes gunked at the corners. He went into the kitchen and ran the tap, drank two glassfuls, and then he turned the water hot and put some at his eyes and rubbed them. He passed the den, woodland triptych over the brown couch slightly cocked to one side, and stopped, backed and stood at the empty frame, the molding at his head wood colored and squared. His father lay at one side with his knees pulled close to his chest. His head nudged the brick on the floor. A nodded low flame lit one part of his face.

The coals wept orange and the fire moved inside them, and the embers hissed, and popped, and one leapt a high arc and skidded at the wood floor, settled and kept bright hot in the dark, and then another coal spat but was dead before it struck the wood. He looked closer, blinked at the dark and the flame tilt shifting light in the room. He saw thimble holes burned at the floor in other spots. He bent down and put hands to them, and then he stooped behind his father. He sat down and prodded one hand on his wide back, and he shook him, and then he patted the top of his head, hair sprigged thin and white on top, his scalp pink, shined wet in the light put there by the fire. He kept his face to the coals. A few minutes Terry sat and watched him breathe, and blink, and smoke held at the flue and fell back a skein and high in the room. Terry’s eyes watered. He lit a cigarette and took a deep pull, and then he put it to his father’s lips, and he drug on it, and blew out. Terry stood up, finished the smoke in two pulls and thumped it to the coals. He nudged his father at the back with one foot and then he did it some more.

You going to get up? he said.

No. I’m not.

He reached under the top rim of the fireplace brick and jostled the lever on the flue. He felt the air draft up the chimney. He sat again behind him.

You should sometime, he said.

I can’t.

Alright.

He left the house and tramped the yard toward the treeline, and the light sifted gray in the east. He stopped past the first of them and then he stood beneath an old tall oak and looked up on it, deep lined trunk, leaves bobbed animal. What he thought was, you can’t be. What he thought was, you won’t hold. A few minutes he turned the questions in his head and meant to sort them, but then his father stood beside, eyes red and smelling ash, his arms crossed high at the chest, wearing a blue robe and old knee high duck boots untied. He wore a tall, round boxed hat just onto his deep lined brow, brown fur, black flecked on the ends, animal pelt, soviet.

Where did you get that hat? he said.

I won it.

For what?

I can’t remember. It was a long time ago.

What is it, like a beaver or something?

It’s grizzly bear.

Really?

No. It’s antelope.

Really?

No.

Well what is it?

I’m not sure.

Terry looked at him. What he thought was, what kind of man are you? He passed him the lit cigarette, and got another. He didn’t know a thing about him. They smoked, and did not speak, watched the tree and the coming light. His father reached a few feet up the trunk, held a bundle of gray moss one hand, worked it apart some with the other.