Free Rock Springs by Richard Ford

that make any sense to you?” He looked at me as if he thought I was going to lie to him, which I wasn’t.
    â€œThat makes plenty of sense,” I said.
    â€œYou’ve been married, haven’t you? You have your daughter.”
    â€œThat’s right,” I said.
    â€œYou’re divorced, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes.”
    Bobby looked up at the security camera above the kitchen door, and with his finger and thumb made a gun that he pointed at the camera, and made a soft popping with his lips, then he looked at me and smiled. It seemed to make him calmer. It was a strange thing.
    â€œBefore my mother died, okay?” Bobby said, “I used to call her on the phone. And it took her a long time to get out of bed. And I used to wait and wait and wait while it rang. And sometimes I knew she just wouldn’t answer it, because she couldn’t get up. Right? And it would ring forever because it was me, and I was willing to wait. Sometimes I’d just let it ring, and so would she, and I wouldn’t know what the fuck was going on. Maybe she was dead, right?” He shook his head.
    â€œI’ll bet she knew it was you,” I said. “I bet it made her feel better.”
    â€œYou think?” Bobby said.
    â€œIt’s possible. It seems possible.”
    â€œWhat would you do, though?” Bobby said. He bit his lower lip and thought about the subject. “When would you let it stop ringing? Would you let it go twenty-five or fifty? I wanted her to have time to decide. But I didn’t want to drive her crazy. Okay?”
    â€œTwenty-five seems right,” I said.
    Bobby nodded. “That’s interesting. I guess we all do things different. I always did fifty.”
    â€œThat’s fine.”
    â€œFifty’s way too many, I think.”
    â€œIt’s what you think
now?
I said. “But then was different.”
    â€œThere’s a familiar story,” Bobby said.
    â€œIt’s everybody’s story,” I said. “The then-and-now story.”
    â€œWe’re just short of paradise, aren’t we, Russell?”
    â€œYes we are,” I said.
    Bobby smiled at me then in a sweet way, a way to let anyone know he wasn’t a bad man, no matter what he’d robbed.
    â€œWhat would you do if you were me,” Bobby said, “if you were on your way to Deer Lodge for a year?”
    I said, “I’d think about when I was going to get out, and what kind of day that was going to be, and that it wasn’t very far in the future.”
    â€œI’m just afraid it’ll be too noisy to sleep in there,” he said and looked concerned about that.
    â€œIt’ll be all right,” I said. “A year can go by quick.”
    â€œNot if you never sleep,” he said. “That worries me.”
    â€œYou’ll sleep,” I said. “You’ll sleep fine.”
    And Bobby looked at me then, across the kitchen table, like a man who knows half of something and who is supposedto know everything, who sees exactly what trouble he’s in and is scared to death by it.
    â€œI feel like a dead man, you know?” And tears suddenly came into his pale eyes. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I know you’re mad at me. I’m sorry.” He put his head in his hands then and cried. And I thought: What else could he do? He couldn’t avoid this now. It was all right.
    â€œIt’s okay, bud,” I said.
    â€œI’m happy for you and Arlene, Russ,” Bobby said, his face still in tears. “You have my word on that. I just wish she and I had stayed together, and I wasn’t such an asshole. You know what I mean?”
    â€œI know exactly,” I said. I did not move to touch him, though maybe I should have. But Bobby was not my brother, and for a moment I wished I wasn’t tied to all this. I was sorry I had to see any of it, sorry that each of us would have to remember