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"Do you have enough ive him any cash?"

"I’m fine, Mom I have plenty froun to pool with tears "Oh, I said I wouldn’t do this" She waves her hands in front of her face "Lorraine, I said, don’t you dare cry"

He steps into her war He breathes in the sed with the che nicotine of her breakfast cigarette

"You can let hi to be late"

"Harvard My Ti to Harvard I just can’t believe it"

The ride to the bus station, in a neighboring town, takes thirty hways The car, a late-model Buick LeSabre with a soft suspension and seats of crushed velour, ue, as if they are levitating It is his father’s one self-indulgence: every two years a new LeSabre appears in the driveway, all but indistinguishable from the last They pass the last houses and ease into the countryside The fields are fat with corn; birds wheel over the windbreaks Here and there a farmhouse, so, foundations tipping, upholstered furniture on the porches and abandoned toys in the yards Everything the boy sees touches his heart with fondness

"Listen," his father says, as they are approaching the station, "there’s so I wanted to say to you"

Here it co announcement, whatever it is, is the reason they’ve left his irls or sex; apart from one aard conversation when he was thirteen, the subject has never been raised Study hard? Keep your nose to the grindstone? But these things, too, have already been said

His father clears his throat "I didn’t want to say this before Well,to say is that you’re destined for big things, son Great things I’ve always known that about you"

"I’ll do my best, I pro" His father hasn’t looked at the boy once "What I’ is, this isn’t the place for you any What can his father intend?

"It doesn’t mean we don’t love you," the man continues "Far from it We only hat’s best"

"I don’t understand"