this rickety old bench under the trees that shaded the old house. He taught me how to read, using the labels from discarded dog food cans, and he would teach me these wonderful songs, none of which I remember. Oddly, I remember the smell of chewing tobacco from his stained brown teeth as he spoke, mixed with the odor of the surrounding bushes and trees.

If I had to describe Paul for you, I would ask you to envision Robert Frost in overalls and you would have an accurate picture. If you could imagine a frog reciting poetry, you would have his voice as well, deep and gravelly. He was my mentor for the short time that I made his acquaintance, and knowing someone so old at so young an age helped me understand how life cycles and recycles itself.

I remember clearly the day George Read came to our house with the news that his father-in-law had "passed away." I don't remember any tears in my eyes for the old guy, as if I knew — or Paul himself had somehow prepared me to know — that he had lived an unnaturally

time long time and was ready to rest from the burden that had become his life.

For all I knew at the time, people would just keep getting taller and bigger, as Bob and I did in the five years we were there in Rio Linda. Left completely to my childish devices, I might have imagined becoming a giant like Bob, growing endlessly. It was through Paul's death that I learned by example how it really was, that I and everyone I knew had at least this one thing in common the stiff birds and mice I had seen lying motionless on the ground.

The very passage of time itself during these years is a blur to me now. I remember that the nation was being led by this old, retired general everybody liked. People talked endlessly about a "cold war." The Russians were the new bad guys, but memories of the Great War that killed Uncle Tommy were still fresh, kept alive in George Reed's nervous breakdown and the heavy souvenir samurai sword he kept in his linen closet.

My mother had had enough of the nightly jet engine testing that seemed to getting more intense with the