The Risk Pool

vision and apparently a little unnerved by the man’s just standing there.
    “My father,” I said, though I don’t remember being certain. With the sun at his back it was impossible to tell.
    “Sure,” Claude Jr. said sarcastically.
    I happened at that moment to be holding the football, so I gave it a good heave straight out into the lake.
    “Now you can go get it,” Claude said.
    But I was already headed up the beach in the opposite direction.
    “Hey!” Claude said, looking alternately at me and the bobbing football, which had caught the current and was floating down the beach in the direction of the teenagers. “Hey, goddamn it!”
    “I don’t think
that’s
such a very nice way to talk,” I heard Mrs. Claude say.
    “Hello, Bud,” my father said when I’d made the long trek up the beach. “Who’s your fat friend?”
    I told him Claude Schwartz. We stood there looking down the sloping beach at the Claudes and the tiny bobbing football, now a good hundred yards out in the current and still on the move. Big Claude and Little Claude were staring at us openly, while Mrs. Claude peeked from beneath her towel.
    “How’d you get hooked up with them?”
    That was what he wanted to know after all that time—how I had managed to get hooked up with the Claudes. I shrugged.
    “You’re still talkative, I see.”
    He was right. I wasn’t much of a conversationalist, especially around him. For a while there I’d gotten to like talking, but only around certain people, like Father Michaels. Since he’d gone, I had pretty much given it up again. Part of the problem, with my father anyway, was that the things he said didn’t exactly lend themselves to response.
    “Well?” he said.
    A case in point.
    “I missed you,” I said. It sort of came out of left field, not at all naturally, but it was the only thing I could think of.
    Apparently it was all right with him, because he said, “I missed you, too.” That settled, we just stood there for a while until the Claudes’ football bobbed out of sight around the point.
    When I went back down to gather my stuff, Mrs. Claude wanted to know if it really was my father, and I said it was. “You’re sure?” she said, obviously a little apprehensive about letting me go off with him. Why didn’t he come down and introduce himself, or at least let somebody get a look at him? After all, the Claudes were in all probability legally responsible for my safe return to Mohawk. The poor woman looked like she would have liked to consult her husband on these matters, but the other two Claudes had rounded the point in pursuit of the football.
    I pulled on my shirt and scuffed into my tennis shoes. “Sorry about the ball,” I said. “It’s just that Claude can be a real turd.”
    I half expected her to be angry with me for saying that, but she just looked sad, as if I’d voiced a sentiment she herself had been trying to find the right words to express. “I hope you’ll keep being his friend,” she said when I started back up the beach to where my father waited.
    I turned and gave her a smile, surprised to discover that just then I liked her. “Sure,” I said. Why not.

9
    We headed up the dirt road toward the guard shack at the entrance to the park. There were just a few cars parked in the shade along the way and none of them looked like the sort that would belong to my father. I did not mind walking, or even not knowing where we were headed. He seemed content too, not all that interested in catching up on things. I was grateful for that. I don’t know how I would have summarized such a long time. He did want to know if my mother was all right, and when I said I guessed so he didn’t press me.
    At the entrance to the park, the attendant was still asleep inside the shack, his chair tilted up against the inner wall, his legs alone protruding out the front door. Spying them, my father put a handon my shoulder and motioned for me to be quiet. There was a tiny open window on the side wall of the shack and my father peeked in before unfastening the screen door from its outside hook. The door moaned on its hinges a little, but the sleeper did not stir.
    When the screen hit the side of the shack like a pistol shot, the feet resting on the legs of the tilting chair went straight up in the air. Things were still crashing inside the shack when my father disappeared around back. A taut face appeared for just an instant in the tiny window and looked directly at me. Then its