Canada by Richard Ford

was Rudy Patterson. He was a year older and was a Mormon (which I looked up, and Rudy said meant polygamists, among other things), and already went to high school, which made him intensely interesting to me. He was red-headed and raw-boned and tall with big feet, and had a little pale skim of a mustache he was proud of. Once, he and I walked across the street and shot baskets against the backboard the town had installed there. He told me his plan was to leave school soon and go to California and join a band, or else the Marines. He’d already asked Berner if she wanted to go with him or possibly meet him there some time later, and she’d said no—which made Rudy say Berner was tough as nails, which she was. While we played, under the dense, sweet-smelling bonnet of elms and box elders, thick with humming cicadas, Berner had sat on our front porch steps—exactly as our mother had—squinting into the sun, hugging her knees and watching us scrimmage around. She called out, “Don’t you tell him what I said. I don’t want him in on my secrets.” I didn’t know which of us she was talking to—Rudy or me. I didn’t know Berner’s secrets, although I had once thought I knew everything about her because we were twins. But she must’ve had new secrets by then, since she no longer talked to me about private matters and treated me as if I was much younger than she was and as if her life had started in a direction leading her away from mine.
    WHAT I KNOW firsthand about bad things—seriously bad things—was that late in the first week of August my father came home one evening, and though I didn’t see him, I knew something unusual was going on in the house. You become sensitized to such things by the sound of a porch door slapping closed too hard, or the thump of someone’s heavy boot heels hitting the floorboards, or the creak of a bedroom door opening and a voice beginning to speak, then that door quickly closing, leaving only muffled noises audible.
    It was hot and dry and dusty in our house in midsummer, which affected Berner’s allergies. (It was always drafty and cold in winter.) My mother kept the attic fan turned on and liked to sit in the cool bath in the early evening before she cooked dinner, when pastel light shone in through the tiny, square bathroom window. She burned a sandalwood candle on the toilet top and stayed in until the water was cold. My father had been out of the house, supposedly learning about land sales. But when he got home, he went right into the bathroom where our mother was and started talking in a forceful, animated way. The door closed on what he was saying. But I heard him say, “I’ve bumped into some trouble with this . . .” I didn’t hear the rest. I was in my room reading about bees and listening to my radio. I felt the need to perfect my strategy for getting to the State Fair. We had never gone in the four years we’d been there. My mother saw little reason for it, since she didn’t like the rides or the smells, and Berner wasn’t interested.
    My father stayed talking to my mother in the bathroom for a long time. It began to get dark outside, and my sister came out of her room and turned on the lights in the living room, closed the curtains and turned off the attic fan so that the house became still.
    In a little while the bathroom door opened and my father said, “I can worry about all this later. Just not now.” My mother said, “Of course. I guess I don’t blame you.” He came to the door of my room, which was open. He was wearing his black Acme boots and a white shirt with arrow-slit pockets and pearl buttons and his rattlesnake belt. He liked to dress well after being in a uniform most of his life. Learning to sell ranches had persuaded him he needed to look like a rancher even if he didn’t know anything about ranches. He asked what I was doing. I told him I was learning about bees and intended to visit the State Fair, which I’d mentioned already. There