Chapter 9: Family Day

I didn't wave.

The helicopter came over the ridge ten minutes later and set down in the meadow below camp, flattening the grass in a big silver ring.

Every family's people were on it, or on the second one behind it.

Mothers, husbands, a toddler in a puffy suit, somebody's grandpa with an oxygen tank.

The Tulsa grandmother's daughter ran across the meadow crying and nearly knocked her flat.

My mother climbed out last.

She took Roy's arm on the step, and I saw her knee brace through her jeans.

She was wearing her good quilted vest, the navy one she wore to parent-teacher nights.

She looked at the camp, at the fire ring, at my spare tent forty feet from Tent 9.

Then she looked at me.

Two handhelds were already on her.

Roy got to us first.

He walked straight past me and grabbed Huck in a hug that lifted him off his heels.

"There's my boy." He smacked Huck's back three times. "You look like hell. You eating?"

"Bacon, once," Huck said into his shoulder.

Roy let go and held him at arm's length.

"Your shirt was inside out on the TV, son. I raised you better than that."

Huck went red to the ears.

Roy turned to me and hugged me too, gentler, his big hand on the back of my head.

"And you," he said in my ear. "Fourteen minutes on the nav race. I yelled so loud the neighbor came over."

"Hi, Roy."

"Hi, kid." He stepped back and lowered his voice, which for Roy meant only half the meadow heard it. "Go easy on your mom. She hasn't slept."

My mother came across the grass slowly, favoring the knee.

She stopped in front of me.

She didn't hug me.

"I'd like to talk to my daughter," she said, to the handhelds. "Alone."

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