The Risk Pool

in the clean morning light atop its own hill, and as usual I wondered what sort of people lived there, and what it must be like to wake up in such a big house, and what they thought about when they looked out from their vast privacy across the highway into the wild green of Myrtle Park. But maybe they didn’t look in my direction at all. Maybe way off beyond them was another gleaming house on another hill with an even better view, and maybe they looked at that. Or it could be that they just drew the blinds and didn’t go gazing off anywhere. Whoever they were, they had to be pretty happy about things.
    Directly below me, among the mounds of junk, a yellow mutt appeared and sniffed around for a good place. I tossed a pebble, which rattled off a car fender. I studied the shack with the corregated iron roof apprehensively. I knew my father was back downtown, snoring on the sofa, yet right then I felt him there below me too, as if there were no contradiction to his being two places at once. It was such a scary idea that I got on my bike and pedaled back downtown.
    I got spooked again when I dismounted in front of Klein’s Department Store. In one of the windows stood a boy mannequin wearing the same plaid shirt and green chinos I had on. His arms were extended outward from his sides, frozen in expectation, as if there were someone nearby he meant to embrace. But he had the small window all to himself and there was nothing much on his side of the glass.
    * * *
    My father was in the bathroom when I got upstairs, and Dave Garroway, Chet Huntley’s identical twin, was on the snowy television. I leaned my bike against the wall near the door and tried to think if there was something I should be doing. If I’d been in my mother’s house, there would have been something, but here it was different. Making the bed seemed like a good idea, so I did that. I was finishing up when the bathroom door opened and he came out in his shorts, smelling of lime, his cheeks smooth, his hair wet and shiny.
    He seemed to have taken waking up and finding me gone pretty much in stride, though he looked me over carefully, in as much as I was back again and he had a minute. “The pants are a little long,” he observed. “How come you’re a runt?”
    That didn’t seem to require an answer, so I didn’t say anything. He stood there waiting though, and it seemed an awfully big room for two people with so little to say to each other.
    “Well?” he said.
    “Well what?”
    “How come you’re a runt?”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    That seemed to satisfy him. He nodded meaningfully, as if maybe
he
had an idea why I was a runt. “Let’s go get some breakfast.”
    He scratched himself, and for a minute, I thought he meant right then. I envisioned the two of us crossing Main Street, me in my new yellow windbreaker, him in his undershorts.
    In the living room he pulled on the same pants he’d draped over the sofa the night before. “You eat?”
    Like most of his questions, this one caused me to hesitate.
Did
I eat?
Had
I eaten? Did he want to know if I was hungry? Whether I usually ate breakfast? Whether eating was customary with me, as with other mortals? I took a stab.
    “Sure,” I said.
    “What?”
    I blinked. “What?”
    “What did you eat?”
    “Nothing. I meant I’m hungry,” I said.
    He tucked his shirt in, and zipped his fly, the television having for the moment caught his attention. He placed each black-shoedfoot on the arm of the sofa to tie his shoelaces, then pocketed his keys and brushed the cigarette ashes off the coffee table and onto the floor “Well?”
    We went down to the street. I walked right past the convertible, figuring he meant to go to the diner across the street. Instead, he got in the car. I retraced my steps and got in too, just in time to get cuffed in the head. “Pay attention,” he said.
    “All right,” I said.
    “Smile.”
    I did my best.
    We pulled away from the curb and rode silently toward the outskirts of town. For some reason, my spirits began to dip again. I was wearing new clothes and didn’t have much to complain about, but I couldn’t dispel the feeling that somehow my personal fortunes had taken an unmistakable turn for the worse. Everywhere, the leaves had begun to turn, but their brilliant oranges and yellows failed to cheer me. I thought about my grandfather. Fourth of July. Mohawk Fair. Eat the Bird, and Winter.
    Out near the highway my father pulled into a steep driveway and