I had the feeling that he might’ve fallen inside, because he looked roughed up, as though he had hurt himself somehow.

My mother came out the door behind him and stood in the floodlight at the top of the steps. She was wearing the powder-blue dress Pd seen through the window, a dress I had never seen her wear before, though she was also wearing a car coat and carrying a suitcase. She looked at me and shook her head in a way that only I was supposed to notice, as if it was not a good idea to talk now.

My father had his hands in his pockets, and he walked right up to Woody. He did not even look at me. “What do you do for a living?” he said, and he was very close to Woody. His coat was close enough to touch Woody’s shirt.

“I’m in the Air Force,” Woody said. He looked at me and then at my father. He could tell my father was excited.

“Is this your day off, then?” my father said. He moved even closer to Woody, his hands still in his pockets. He pushed Woody with his chest, and Woody seemed willing to let my father push him.

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

I looked at my mother. She was just standing, watching. It was as if someone had given her an order, and she was obeying it. She did not smile at me, though I thought she was thinking about me, which made me feel strange.

“What’s the matter with you?” my father said into Woody’s face, right into his face—his voice tight, as if it had gotten hard for him to talk. “Whatever in the world is the matter with you? Don’t you understand something?” My father took a revolver pistol out of his coat and put it up under Woody’s chin, into the soft pocket behind the bone, so that Woody’s whole face rose, but his arms stayed at his sides, his hands open. “I don’t know what to do with you,” my father said. “I don’t have any idea what to do with you. I just don’t.” Though I thought that what he wanted to do was hold Woody there just like that until something important took place, or until he could simply forget about all this.

My father pulled the hammer back on the pistol and raised it tighter under Woody’s chin, breathing into Woody’s face—my mother in the light with her suitcase, watching them, and me watching them. A half a minute must’ve gone by.

And then my mother said, “Jack, let’s stop now. Let’s just stop.”

My father stared into Woody’s face as if he wanted Woody to consider doing something—moving or turning around or anything on his own to stop this—that my father would then put a stop to. My father’s eyes grew narrowed, and his teeth were gritted together, his lips snarling up to resemble a smile. “You’re crazy, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re a goddamned crazy man. Are you in love with her, too? Are you, crazy man? Are you? Do you say you love her? Say you love her! Say you love her so I can blow your fucking brains in the sky.”

“All right,” Woody said. “No. It’s all right.”

“He doesn’t love me, Jack. For God’s sake,” my mother said. She seemed so calm. She shook her head at me again. I do not think she thought my father would shoot Woody. And I don’t think Woody thought so.