Free A Quality of Light by Richard Wagamese

ma’am. I kind of don’t think so.”
    “Well, we’ll work on that,” she said, kindly.
    “Your dad’s not really a stranger to hardware, John,” my dad said. “I remember when we were kids, he was always helping your grandfather out in the store after school. Nuts and bolts and things are in his blood. Just like Joshua here with farming. No matter what he does or where he goes in life, he’s always going to have the farm and the land in his blood. He was born to it.”
    “I didn’t think my dad was ever a kid.”
    “Pardon me, John?” my mother said.
    “Nothing. Can I have some more beans, please,” he said, with the energy withdrawing from his face like I’d seen at the welcoming. My parents looked over at him with concern and then at each other.
    “Pass the beans, Joshua,” my mother said.
    “So what is it you like to do, John? Do you have hobbies? Sports? You don’t happen to fish, do you?” my dad asked, with a wink at me.
    “Fish? No, sir. I’ve never been fishing. I’d like to, though. Mostly I just read, sir.”
    “Well, reading’s good,” he said. “Joshua reads all the time too. What do you like to read about?”
    “Indians, mostly, sir.”
    “Indians?”
    “Yessir. I like ’em.”
    “You know that Joshua’s an Indian, don’t you, John?” my mother asked.
    “Yes, ma’am. But I mean
real
Indians. You know, warriors and stuff.”
    “I think there’s more to Indians than just being warriors, isn’t there, John?” my dad asked.
    “No, sir. I read about it. They were warriors.”
    “Joshua’s not a warrior,” my mother said.
    “Yes, ma’am. That’s what I mean.
Real
Indians.”
    The rest of that meal passed amiably with my parents chatting about the farm, the animals and the crops and Johnny and me eating as hungrily as boys can eat, grinning at each other now and then, happy with the secrets of baseball and blood brotherhood.
    I had a sense that these secrets were leading me up and away from the nest of security I’d always found in the friendship with my parents and I teetered on the edge of flight, wings flexing slightly, eager for the adventure of the air.
    My dad drove Johnny back to town at twilight. We strapped his bike to the roof and sat in the front seat together, and we grinned when my father started whistling a slow version of “Sally Gooden” while he drove. No one spoke, we just watched the road and the setting sun over the ripple of hills, the cows in the fields and the hawks swooping low over them. It was a comfortable silence. Now and then Johnny would turn his head and we’d exchange a grin, joined forever by our mingled blood and our solemn pledge. Such are the bonds of Indians and of boys.
    We pulled up in front of Old Man Givens’s place. The Gebhardts had moved into it after turning down Harold’s offer to live with him. Old Man Givens was about ninety-five when he’d passed away the year before. He’d known everything and anything about everybody. He’d watched generations of boys become men and girls become women, friendships formed and ended, marriages, funerals, farm foreclosures and Mildmay itself move from shabby hamlet to bustling agricultural center for the county. Farmers liked Mildmay. Walkerton with its three thousand people was like a city in our scope of things and Mildmay was, and is, the unofficial center of Bruce County.
    Old Man Givens had watched it all evolve, and the days when he was well enough to make the journey to Harold’s store were days rich with storytelling and laughter. His wrinkled, bony fingers pointed out individuals, and the crowd huddled around the coffee station listened intently while he recounted embarrassing escapades of their younger days. His passing left us shallower somehow. I remember him for the smell of snuff and old houses and the lollipops he always seemed to have for any kids lurking around the store those days. I was glad that Johnny was living in his house.
    We were pulling the ropes that