Canada by Richard Ford Page B

forehead was prominent.
    She looked at him—as if she hadn’t heard this before. She was kneeling beside my bed, her fingers lightly on my chest. “That’s right,” she said.
    “Can we go with you?” I said.
    “We’ll take you next time,” he said.
    My dream passed in my mind. I’m going. Shouting. Fists clenched.
    “Look after your sister.” He smiled knowingly. “She’s under Colonel Parsons’ jurisdiction here.” He made a joke out of things if he could.
    “Are you going to shoot somebody?”
    “Oh my God,” my mother said.
    My father’s large mouth, which had been smiling, fell open. He squinted—as if a glaring light had been switched on. “Why would you say that?”
    “He knows,” my mother said. She stood beside my bed and stared down at me, as if I was to blame for something. I didn’t know anything.
    “What do you think you know, Dell?” My father’s smile resumed its activity across his face. He seemed understanding.
    “You took your pistol last time.”
    He took a step forward into my room. “Oh. People carry guns out here. That’s common. It’s the Wild West. You don’t ever shoot anybody.”
    My mother was looking at me steadily. Her small eyes were intent behind her spectacles, as if she was studying me for some sign. She was sweating under her blouse—I smelled it. It was already hot in the house.
    “Are you afraid?” she asked.
    “No,” I said.
    “He’s not afraid,” my father said, and stepped out of the doorway and looked toward the clock in the kitchen. “We need to go.” He disappeared into the hall.
    My mother continued to stare at me, as if I’d become a person she didn’t completely know.
    “Think of some wonderful place you’d like to go, why don’t you?” she said. “I’ll take you there. You and Berner.”
    The front screen slapped shut. “He’s under Colonel Parsons’ jurisdiction here,” I heard him say. He was talking to Berner on the porch.
    “Moscow,” I said. I’d read in Chess Master that great players came from Russia. Mikhail Tal—who was famous for his sacrificing style and terrible stare. Alexander Alekhine—noted for his aggressiveness. I’d looked Moscow up in the Merriam-Webster , and then in the World Book , and finally on the globe on the dresser in my room. I didn’t know what the Soviet Union was, or why it was different from Russia. Lenin, who my father said played chess, had played a part in it. And Stalin. Men he despised. He said Stalin had put Roosevelt in the grave the same as if he’d shot him.
    “Moscow!” my mother said. “My poor father would have a heart attack. I was thinking of Seattle.”
    The Chevrolet horn honked in the street. I heard the screen door close again. Berner was coming back inside, ready to take care of me. “His pot’s boiling over,” I heard her say. My mother leaned forward, kissed me quickly on my forehead. “We can talk about it when I get back,” she said. Then she left.
    WHEN WE LIVED in Mississippi, in Biloxi—which was in 1955, when I was eleven—my father worked at the base there and stayed home on the weekends, the way he did in Great Falls. He liked Mississippi. It was close to where he’d grown up, and he liked the Gulf of Mexico. If he’d left the Air Force then and there, instead of when he did, things would’ve worked out better for him and for our mother. They could’ve gotten divorced and gone their separate ways. Children can make their adjustments if their parents love them. And ours did.
    My father often took me to the movies on Saturday mornings when there was something he wanted to see or had nothing else to do. There was an air-cooled theater called the Trixy, which was on the downtown main street that ended at the Gulf. The movies started at ten and lasted straight until four, with shorts and cartoons and features running continuously, all for a single admission, which was fifty cents. We would sit through everything, eating candy and popcorn and