Just being a patrol car.”

“Clary’s asleep. Mom’s watching news,” Paul said, adopting his mother’s way of dropping definite articles, a midwest mannerism. They went to market. She has flu. We bought tickets.

“Who was that you gave his freedom to?”

“Ole Vassar.” Paul looked up the street. Paul names his birds after hillbilly tunesters—Ernest, Chet, Loretta, Bobby, Jerry Lee—and had adopted his father’s partiality for oie as a term of pure endearment. I could’ve hauled him through the window and hugged him till we both cried out, so much did I love him at that moment. “I didn’t give him his freedom right off, though.”

“Old Vassar has a mission first, then?”

“Yes sir,” Paul said and looked down at the pavement. It was clear I was burdening his privacy, of which he has plenty. But I knew he felt he had to talk about Vassar now.

“What’s Vassar’s mission?” I asked bravely.

“To see Ralph.”

“Ralph. What’s he going to see Ralph for?”

Paul sighed a small boy’s put-on sigh, transformed back from a big boy. “To see if he’s all right. And tell him about us.”

“You mean it’s a report.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Head still down at the pavement.

“On all of us?”

“Yeah.”

“And how did it come out?”

“Good.” Paul avoided my eyes in another direction.

“My part okay, too?”

“Your part wasn’t too long. But it was good.”

“That’s all right. Just so I made it in. When’s Ole Vassar reporting back?”

“He isn’t. I told him he could live in Cape May.”

“Why is that?”

“Because Ralph’s dead. I think.”

I had taken him and his sister to Cape May only last fall, and I was interested now that he supposed the dead lived there. “It’s a one-way mission, then.”

“Right.”

Paul stared fiercely at the door of my car and not at me, and I could sense he was confused by all this talk of dead people. Kids are most at home with sincerity and the living (who could blame them?), unlike adults, who sometimes do not have an unironical bone in their bodies, even for things that are precisely in front of them and can threaten their existence. Paul’s and mine, though, has always been a friendship founded on sincerity’s rock.

“What do you know tonight to tickle me?” I said. Paul is a secret cataloger of corny jokes and can make anyone laugh out loud, even at a joke they’ve heard before, though he often chooses to withhold. I myself envy his memory.

For this question, though, he had to consider. He wagged his head backwards in pretend-thought, and stared into the tree boughs as if all the good jokes were up there. (What did I say about things always changing and surprising us? Who would’ve thought a drive down a dark street could produce a conversation with my own son! One in which I find out he’s in contact with his dead brother—a promising psychological indicator, though a bit unnerving—plus get to hear a joke as well.)

“Ummm, all right,” Paul said. He was all Johnny now. By the way he stuffed his hands in his pockets and averted his mouth I could tell he thought it was a pretty funny one.

“Ready?” I said. With anyone else this would spoil the joke.