The writer who might better have been a lawyer; the lawyer who might better have been a teacher; the soldier who might better have been a priest; the priest who might better have been most anything. My father could’ve sold something else. Cars. He could’ve worked in a hardware. Possibly he could have farmed with his father, if he’d had one. But he wouldn’t likely—in my view—have done much better than he did at Faultless. He had no notable skills besides his good personality. Selling was perfect. His job—fitting into it and liking it—was part and parcel to understanding him. Greater challenges might only have frustrated him and rendered him unhappy. If he had dreams of something else, I never heard of them later. He seemed to be where he belonged and thought so. If he had a self-image, his own outlook, it was that. Habit became his guide—along with my mother. It does no injustice to him to say that.

BUT THEN, TO EVERYONE’S SURPRISE, my mother was pregnant in the summer of 1943. And the course of everything changed.

Seeing one’s advent as a mixed blessing is not necessarily bad. They had almost certainly concluded—after fifteen years—that there would be no children. My parents may have harbored complex and possibly unexpressed feelings about that: of life now staying the same—and being good. Of settling somewhere—just the two of them. New Orleans. The time together was precious. It was what they knew. Did he feel he had something to impart that, without a child, would never be imparted? Did each or both of them think my father would not live long due to his heart so that a child was a needless difficulty? All are possible.

As I said, they officially wanted children. Though that they were now going to have a baby could only have been unsettling. He’d become thirty-eight and was not robust. She was thirty-three. His boss in Kansas City—Mr. Hoyt again, who had children of his own—said, “Parker, you have to choose a place to live now. Not just the road. Find the middle of your territory.