Free As Good As Gone (9781616206000) by Larry Watson

give you pleasure?”
    Calvin’s son has placed a wooden chair next to the bed to serve as a nightstand, and on the chair seat is a tin ashtray and a wind-­up alarm clock. Next to them Calvin puts his tin of Sir Walter Raleigh, a packet of rolling papers, and a box of matches.
    He walks over to the stairs but without the intention of ascending. Linoleum covers the basement floor, and Calvin lifts the linoleum and rolls it back to reveal the cement underneath.
    Pauline asked him to come down into the basement. That too was during the winter, but if Calvin recalls correctly, it was one of the mild years, an open winter. He’d been busy with something, real estate paperwork probably, since so many evenings seemed filled with it, and he resented being called away from his desk. But Pauline told him that Bill asked for them, so Calvin followed her down the stairs.
    Bill couldn’t have been more than five or six, and he was astride the stick horse that seemed to accompany him everywhere but to school and church.
    â€œSee how fast I go,” Bill said, and began to gallop around the circumference of the room.
    After four circuits, Bill stopped in front of his parents and breathlessly asked, “How fast?”
    Pauline clapped her hands enthusiastically and said, “Oh fast! Very, very fast!”
    â€œBut
how
fast?” Bill insisted on knowing.
    Calvin caught on before his wife did. The previous summer the family had attended the Florence County Fair, which featured horse races. The Sideys had seats in the grandstand right next to old Doc Vincent, an area veterinarian, who had a stop watch he was using to time the winning horses. What Bill was asking for when he galloped around the basement was an official time.
    Calvin took out his pocket watch and commanded his son, “Around the track again.” Only then did Calvin notice that there really was a track. With chalk Bill had drawn a wavering, lopsided oval on the basement floor. And around it he raced again, slapping his own haunches as he ran, his shoes clap-­clapping on the cement.
    There’s not a trace of that chalk line under the linoleum now, but Calvin has a troubling suspicion that his son still wastes his time running in circles.

EIGHT
    Because of the long drive ahead of them, Bill and Marjorie Sidey attend the first service instead of the second at Gladstone’s Olivet Lutheran Church. Their presence, along with their children’s, causes a minor disruption in the church. The Sideys sit in their usual pew, failing to realize that in doing so they’re taking the place of the Hurds, the family that always occupies that space at eight o’clock on Sunday morning. The Hurds, unwilling to say anything but mildly flustered, slide into the pew where the Froelichs usually sit. Fortunately, this ripple of confusion and displacement goes no further. Diane Froelich simply smiles and waves at the Sideys and the Hurds, then leads her husband and three daughters to a pew at the back of the church, a space generally reserved for irregular attendees, late arrivals, or wives who have not been able to persuade spouses or children to accompany them.
    EARLIER IN THE SUMMER, Will Sidey got into trouble for fidgeting and kicking the pew in front of him during the service. In the midst of his father’s lecture on piety and respect, Will blurted out, “Dad, I didn’t even know I was doing it!” At that, his father’s heart seemed to soften, and he told Will that he realized sitting still for an hour could be difficult. When the boredom gets to be too much for you, Bill Sidey told his son, “Go ahead and tune Pastor Sodegard out for a while. Let your mind roam a bit.” He leaned forward and confided to his son, “I’ve often planned out my whole week during one of his sermons.”
    This Sunday, Will Sidey plans out a good deal more than a week. Sometime during his grandfather’s visit, Will is going