Chapter 29

Bud's earliest memory, and he was not sure whether it was a real recollection or just one that had been implanted by numerous tellings, was of his behavior when he was still a toddler and liked to crawl rather than walk on the soft living room rug. He thought he recalled looking up at the fringed lampshade under which his father habitually read the newspaper.

He could still see it in his mind with its three glowing light bulbs and dangling brass chains. The shade was a dark orange and the fringe was sort of gold, a greenish gold. He sat up with his back to his father's shinbone, his hand on his slippered foot and looked around the living room.

Opposite his father, who was smoking a pipe, sat his mother, still wearing her flowered apron, and she was reading a magazine with a picture of a skater in front of a large red ball on the cover, which he guessed, was supposed to be the sun but did not really look like it. He liked the way his mother flicked through the pages with her thumbs.

Philip, who was sharing the light of his father's lamp, had his nose buried in a schoolbook of some sort, a thick one with a light blue cover, and Janie was looking at a movie magazine with a pretty woman with very red lips on the cover. Her foot was rocking to and fro in front of her crossed legs. Dinner had been over for a half hour and that evening's favorite radio shows were yet to begin. The house was very quiet.

"Read," Bud said. And when no one looked up, he again said, "Read," just a bit louder and looked from person to person. His mother smiled at him and flicked another page.

"Eh?" said his father, setting aside his pipe and moving his feet.

"Read, Dada," Bud said, or at least he had been told he said that and it sure sounded right when he thought about it.

His father peeled off the wide page with the comic strips on it and folded it into a square and handed it down to him.

Bud flopped on his stomach, wriggled to get more comfortable with his feet under the skirt of his father's chair and looked at the pictures and the balloons with words in them. He studied the images for some time and then crawled over to Janie and sat on his haunches with his toes turned out like a cocker spaniel and held up the folded sheet of newsprint.

"Read me, Janie," he said hopefully.

"Ask Phil," his sister said, waving toward her brother with her magazine as if she were shooing a fly. She crossed her legs the other way.

Bud crawled to his brother's knees, tugged on his trousers and lifted the newspaper up to his lap. "Read, please, Pill," he said.

Phillip held his book open in front of Bud's nose. "Home-work," he said. "Got to get this done. Science. Test tomorrow."

Bud whacked Phil in the leg with his folded paper as he sat back on his heels, and his brother pushed him away with his foot, rolling him over on his side.

Bud crawled over to his mother's rocking chair with the newspaper in his mouth and got himself up on his knees so his head was right beside her lap. He slipped the folded newspaper between her and her magazine.

He smiled up at his mother, and she set aside her Saturday Evening Post and lifted her younger son up to sit sideways on her thighs. She smoothed out the newspaper and pointed. "Do you know which one is Mutt and which one is Jeff?" she asked.

Bud pointed and looked up at her. "Jeff," he said.

"Right, good boy," said his mother, bouncing him up and down. "Now let's see what they are up to today."