“Well, no. And I’m sorry about that. I guess I’m sorriest about that.” And then, “What makes you ask?”

Cal ignored the question. “Would you give me some advice?”

Will felt a glow of pleasure. “If I can, I’ll be glad to. What is it you want to know?”

And then Cal did something Will Hamilton approved even more. He used candor as a weapon. He said, “I want to make a lot of money. I want you to tell me how.”

Will overcame his impulse to laugh. Naïve as the statement was, he didn’t think Cal was naïve. “Everybody wants that,” he said. “What do you mean by a lot of money?”

“Twenty or thirty thousand dollars.”

“Good God!” said Will, and he screeched his chair forward. And now he did laugh, but not in derision. Cal smiled along with Will’s laughter.

Will said, “Can you tell me why you want to make so much?”

“Yes, sir,” said Cal, “I can.” And Cal opened the box of Murads and took out one of the oval cork-tipped cigarettes and lighted it. “I’ll tell you why,” he said.

Will leaned his chair back in enjoyment.

“My father lost a lot of money.”

“I know,” said Will. “I warned him not to try to ship lettuce across the country.”

“You did? Why did you?”

“There were no guarantees,” said Will. “A businessman has to protect himself. If anything happened, he was finished. And it happened. Go on.”

“I want to make enough money to give him back what he lost.”

Will gaped at him. “Why?” he asked.

“I want to.”

Will said, “Are you fond of him?”

“Yes.”

Will’s fleshy face contorted and a memory swept over him like a chilling wind. He did not move slowly over the past, it was all there in one flash, all of the years, a picture, a feeling and a despair, all stopped the way a fast camera stops the world. There was the flashing Samuel, beautiful as dawn with a fancy like a swallow’s flight, and the brilliant, brooding Tom who was dark fire, Una who rode the storms, and the lovely Mollie, Dessie of laughter, George handsome and with a sweetness that filled a room like the perfume of flowers, and there was Joe, the youngest, the beloved. Each one without effort brought some gift into the family.

Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one. Will had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering. He thought of himself as slow, doltish, conservative, uninspired. No great dream lifted him high and no despair forced self-destruction. He was always on the edge, trying to hold on to the rim of the family with what gifts he had—care, and reason, application. He kept the books, hired the attorneys, called the undertaker, and eventually paid the bills. The others didn’t even know they needed him. He had the ability to get money and to keep it. He thought the Hamiltons despised him for his one ability. He had loved them doggedly, had always been at hand with his money to pull them out of their errors. He thought they were ashamed of him, and he fought bitterly for their recognition. All of this was in the frozen wind that blew through him.

His slightly bulging eyes were damp as he stared past Cal, and the boy asked, “What’s the matter, Mr. Hamilton? Don’t you feel well?”

Will had sensed his family but he had not understood them. And they had accepted him without knowing there was anything to understand. And now this boy came along. Will understood him, felt him, sensed him, recognized him. This was the son he should have had, or the brother, or the father. And the cold wind of memory changed to a warmth toward Cal which gripped him in the stomach and pushed up against his lungs.

He forced his attention to the glass office. Cal was sitting back in his chair, waiting.

Will did not know how long his silence had lasted. “I was thinking,” he said lamely. He made his voice stern. “You asked me something. I’m a businessman. I don’t give things away. I sell them.”

“Yes, sir.” Cal was watchful but he felt that Will Hamilton liked him.

Will said, “I want to know something and I want the truth. Will you tell me the truth?”

“I don’t know,” said Cal.

“I like that. How do you know until you know the question? I like that. That’s smart—and honest. Listen—you have a brother. Does your father like him better than you?”

“Everybody does,” said Cal calmly. “Everybody loves Aron.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, sir. At least—yes, I do.”

“What’s the ‘at least’?”

“Sometimes I think he’s stupid but I like him.”

“Now how about your father?”

“I love him,” said Cal.

“And he loves your brother better.”

“I don’t know.”

“Now, you say you want to give back the money your father lost. Why?”

Ordinarily Cal’s eyes were squinted and cautious, but now they were so wide that they seemed to look around and through Will. Cal was as close to his own soul as it is possible to get.

“My father is good,” he said. “I want to make it up to him because I am not good.”

“If you do that, wouldn’t you be good?”

“No,” said Cal. “I think bad.”

Will had never met anyone who spoke so nakedly. He was near to embarrassment because of the nakedness, and he knew how safe Cal was in his stripped honesty. “Only one more,” he said, “and I won’t mind if you don’t answer it. I don’t think I would answer it. Here it is. Suppose you should get this money and give it to your father—would it cross your mind that you were trying to buy his love?”