Summary

Chapter 1

Joe and his father Basil are working in the yard one Sunday afternoon in late spring. Basil goes inside to nap. Joe finish the work and settles at the kitchen table to read one of his father’s legal books. When Basil wakes, he asks Joe where his mother is at. Joe recalls his mother saying she was going to the office to pick up a file. Basil thinks that perhaps his wife, Geraldine, has had car trouble again. For this reason, he and Basil walk down to the home of Geraldine’s sister, Clemence, to borrow her car. They drive to the office, but Geraldine is not there. They continue into town and pass her car heading in the other direction. Basil thinks that Geraldine went to the grocery store because she had forgotten that it was closed on Sundays and...