And sometimes I knew she just wouldn’t answer it, because she couldn’t get up. Right? And it would ring forever because it was me, and I was willing to wait. Sometimes I’d just let it ring, and so would she, and I wouldn’t know what the fuck was going on. Maybe she was dead, right?” He shook his head.

“I’ll bet she knew it was you,” I said. “I bet it made her feel better.”

“You think?” Bobby said.

“It’s possible. It seems possible.”

“What would you do, though?” Bobby said. He bit his lower lip and thought about the subject. “When would you let it stop ringing? Would you let it go twenty-five or fifty? I wanted her to have time to decide. But I didn’t want to drive her crazy. Okay?”

“Twenty-five seems right,” I said.

Bobby nodded. “That’s interesting. I guess we all do things different. I always did fifty.”

“That’s fine.”

“Fifty’s way too many, I think.”

“It’s what you think now? I said. “But then was different.”

“There’s a familiar story,” Bobby said.

“It’s everybody’s story,” I said. “The then-and-now story.”

“We’re just short of paradise, aren’t we, Russell?”

“Yes we are,” I said.

Bobby smiled at me then in a sweet way, a way to let anyone know he wasn’t a bad man, no matter what he’d robbed.

“What would you do if you were me,” Bobby said, “if you were on your way to Deer Lodge for a year?”

I said, “I’d think about when I was going to get out, and what kind of day that was going to be, and that it wasn’t very far in the future.”

“I’m just afraid it’ll be too noisy to sleep in there,” he said and looked concerned about that.

“It’ll be all right,” I said. “A year can go by quick.”

“Not if you never sleep,” he said. “That worries me.”

“You’ll sleep,” I said. “You’ll sleep fine.”

And Bobby looked at me then, across the kitchen table, like a man who knows half of something and who is supposed to know everything, who sees exactly what trouble he’s in and is scared to death by it.

“I feel like a dead man, you know?” And tears suddenly came into his pale eyes. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I know you’re mad at me. I’m sorry.” He put his head in his hands then and cried. And I thought: What else could he do? He couldn’t avoid this now. It was all right.

“It’s okay, bud,” I said.

“I’m happy for you and Arlene, Russ,” Bobby said, his face still in tears. “You have my word on that. I just wish she and I had stayed together, and I wasn’t such an asshole. You know what I mean?”

“I know exactly,” I said. I did not move to touch him, though maybe I should have. But Bobby was not my brother, and for a moment I wished I wasn’t tied to all this. I was sorry I had to see any of it, sorry that each of us would have to remember it.

On the drive to town Bobby was in better spirits. He and Cherry sat in the back, and Arlene in the front.