That operation didn’t make as much difference to Cat as you might think. I took him back to the clinic to get the stitches out of his leg and the bandages off. A few nights later I heard yowls coming up from the backyard. I went down and pulled him out of a fight. He wasn’t hurt yet, but he sure was right back in there pitching. He seems to have a standing feud with the cat next door.

However, he’s been coming home nights regularly, and sometimes in the cool part of the morning he’ll sit out on the front stoop with me. He sits on a pillar about six feet above the sidewalk, and I sit on the steps and play my transistor and read.

Every time a dog gets walked down the street under Cat’s perch, he gathers himself up in a ball, as if he were going to spring. Of course, the poor dog never knows it was about to be pounced on and wags on down the street. Cat lets his tail go to sleep then and sneers.

Between weathercasts I hear him purring, loud rumbly purrs, and I look up and see Tom there, stroking Cat’s fur up backward toward his ears. Tom is looking out into the street and sort of whistling without making any sound.

“Gee, hi!” I say.

“Hi, too,” he says. He strokes Cat back down the right way, gives him a pat, and sits down. “I just been down to see your dad. He’s quite a guy.”

“Huh-h-h? You got sunstroke or something? Didn’t he read you about ten lectures on Healthy Living, Honest Effort, Baseball, and Long Walks with a Dog?”

“No-o-o.” Tom grins, but then he sits and stares out at the street again, so I wait.

“You know,” he says, “you give me an idea. You talk like your dad is a real pain, and that’s the way I always have felt about mine. But your dad looks like a great guy to me, so well, maybe mine could be too, if I gave him a chance. Your dad was saying I should.”

“Should what? You should go home?”

“No. Your dad said I ought to write him a long letter and face up to all the things I’ve goofed on. Quitting NYU, the cellar trouble, all that. Then tell him I’m going to get a job and go to night school. Your dad figures probably he’d help me. He said he’d write him, too. No reason he should. I’m nothing in his life. It’s pretty nice of him.”

I try to digest all this, and it sure is puzzling. The time I ran down that crumb of a doorman on my bike, accidental on purpose, I didn’t get any long understanding talks. I just got kept in for a month.

Tom slaps me in the middle of the back and stands up. “Hilda’s gone back to work at the coffee shop. I guess I’ll go down and see her before the lunch rush, and then go home and write my letter.”

“Say ‘Hi’ for me.”

“O.K. So long.”

The weather cools off some, and Pop starts to talk about vacation. He’s taking two weeks, last of August and first of September, so I start shopping around for various bits of fishing tackle and picnic gear we might need. We’re going to this lake up in Connecticut, where we get a sort of motel cottage. It has a little hot plate for making coffee in the morning, but most of the rest of the time we eat out, which is neat.

We’re sitting around the living room one evening, sorting stuff out, when the doorbell rings. I go answer it, and Tom walks in. He nods at me like he hardly sees me and comes into the living room. He shakes hands like a wooden Indian. His face looks shut up again, the way it did that day I left him in the filling station.

He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a letter. I can see a post-office stamp in red ink with a pointing hand by the address. He throws it down on Dad’s table.

“I got my answer all right.”

Pop looks at the letter and I see his foot start to twitch the way it does when he’s about to blow. But he looks at Tom, and instead of blowing he just says, “Your father left town? No forwarding address?”

“I guess so. He just left. Him and that woman he married.” Tom’s voice trails off and he walks over to the window. We all sit quiet a minute.

Finally Pop says gently, “Well, don’t waste too much breath on her. She’s nothing to do with you.”

Tom turns around angrily. “She’s no good. She loafs around and drinks all the time. She talked him into going.”

“And he went.” There’s another short silence, and Pop goes on. “Where was this you lived?”

“House. It was a pretty nice little house, too. Dark red with white trim, and enough of a yard to play a little ball, and I grew a few lettuces every spring. I even got one ear of corn once. We moved there when I was in second grade because my mom said it was near a good local school. I lived there till I went to college. I suppose he sold it, or got a loan, and they lit off to drink it up. Soon’s they’d got me off their hands.”

Tom bites off the last word. Suddenly I can see the picture pretty clear: the nice house, the father Tom always talked down and hoped would measure up. Now it’s like somebody has taken his whole childhood and crumpled it up like a wad of tissue paper and thrown it away.

Mom gets up and goes into the kitchen. Pop’s foot keeps on twitching. Finally he says, “Well, I steered you wrong. I’m sorry. But maybe it’s just as well to have it settled.”

“It’s settled, all right,” Tom says.

Mom brings out a tray of ginger-ale glasses. It seems sort of inadequate at a moment like this, but when Tom takes a glass from her he looks like he’s going to bust out crying.

He drinks some and blows his nose, and Dad says, “When are you supposed to check in with the Youth Board again?”

“Tuesday. My day off. And I wind up the filling-station job the next week, right after Labor Day.”

“Labor Day. Hm-m. We’ve got to get moving. If you like, I’ll come down to the Youth Board with you, and we’ll see what we can all cook up. Don’t worry too much. I have a feeling you’re just beginning to fight really fight, not just throw a few stones.”

“I don’t know why you bother.” Tom starts to stand up. But while we’ve been talking, Cat has been creeping up under the side table, playing the ambush game, and he launches himself at Tom just as he starts to stand. It throws him off balance and he sits back in the chair, holding Cat.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Pop says. “Cat’s on your side.”