Free Canada by Richard Ford Page A

My mother seemed to stay out of his way. She fixed our breakfast, and we all sat down and ate. Over his eggs, my father asked Berner and me what we thought we could do that would be useful to the Republic, which was a thing he said when he wanted to know what plans we had. I reminded him that the State Fair was starting that day, and I had my interest in the bee demonstration—which would be useful. He didn’t comment on this and seemed to forget he’d asked. He didn’t joke about anything or smile. His eyes were reddened. He didn’t thank our mother for breakfast. He hadn’t shaved, which he always did when he went to the base, and took care about. His unshaven skin had a gaunt bluish cast. What was wrong with him became the only issue at the table, but nobody asked. I saw our mother look at him irritably from behind her glasses. Her lips were tightened and hard, as if he’d behaved toward her in a way she didn’t like.
    It was also noticeable to me that our father wasn’t wearing his new trousers or his black tooled boots or one of his arrow-pocket shirts, which was how he’d been dressing when he went to work at the farm and ranch sales company. Instead, he’d put on his old blue Air Force jumpsuit and a pair of paint-stained low-cut white tennis shoes, clothes he wore when he mowed the grass or watered. He’d scissored off the insignias when he’d taken his discharge, including the patch that said “PARSONS.” He looked like someone, I thought, who didn’t want to be recognized by anyone who knew him.
    After breakfast there was even less talking. Berner went in her room and closed the door and played a record on her record player. My mother cleaned the kitchen, then went out on the front porch in the morning sun and drank tea and did her crossword book and read a novel for her class with the nuns. I followed our father around the house. He seemed to be going someplace, and I wanted to find out where and if I could go. He took his leather toiletries kit out of the bathroom cupboard and put various items in. He put socks and underwear into his old Air Force canvas bag while I stood in the bedroom door watching. We were a family who didn’t travel unless we were moving to a new town. Staying put was a luxury, my father always said. His fondest wish was to live in one place like everybody else. A person was free to settle anywhere in our country, he believed. Where you were born meant little. That was the beauty of America, and wasn’t true of those countries we’d liberated in the war, where life was confined and provincial. What I feared was that he and our mother had decided to go apart. His behavior seemed to me how things would be if that was happening. Silence. Tension. Anger. Though they’d never talked about going apart that I’d ever heard.
    When I saw him zip up his blue bag (I’d seen him put his pistol in it—his big black .45 caliber he left the Air Force owning), I said:
    “Where are you going?”
    He looked up at me where he sat on the side of his bed. (Our parents slept in two beds.) It was hot in the house, the way it got in the morning. We didn’t turn on the attic fan until afternoon. It was only nine. He smiled at me, as if he hadn’t heard me, which happened sometimes. But the way he’d looked at breakfast—gaunt and sleepless—left his features, and his color came back.
    “Are you a private detective on a case?” he said.
    “Yes,” I said, “I am.” I didn’t want to say, Are you and Mother going to go apart? I didn’t want to hear that.
    “I’m leaving on a business trip,” he said and went on fiddling with his bag.
    “Are you coming back?”
    “Well, certainly,” he said. “Why? Would you like to go with me?”
    Our mother was suddenly beside me in the doorway, clutching her book. She set her hand on my shoulder and gripped it. She wasn’t tall but could take a hard grip. “He’s not going with you,” she said. “I have uses for him here that’ll benefit