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one thing for Gordon to say he didn’t like his own grandmother, but he might not like it if Paul agreed with him.
    â€œAw, you know. She’s always at me. She talks about me like I was some kind of genius or something.”
    Paul started to laugh. He took a long swallow of lemonade and almost choked. Gordon thumped him on the back and after a few agonizing moments, Paul got his breath back.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” Gordon asked.
    â€œNothing. She said you were a tennis champ. Is that right?”
    Gordon shrugged. “Why not? I’ve had lessons since I was five. I’ve had so many lessons I got ’em coming out my eyeballs. I’d have to be a real zero not to be pretty good. It’s important to my parents, you know. That I be first, I mean.”
    They sat in silence. Paul clinked the ice around the sides of his empty glass.
    â€œShe says you get all A’s.” Paul asked offhandedly, “Is that right?”
    Again Gordon shrugged. “Sure. I go to a private school with only fifteen guys in my class. They really keep an eye on you, and when the old B’s start, they call in the tutor. It’s not much of a sweat.”
    â€œI guess not.” Paul felt quite friendly toward Gordon.
    â€œHow do you get to school? I mean, do you walk or take a bus or what?” Gordon asked.
    â€œI walk. It’s only about a half mile.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll walk with you tomorrow. I don’t have any thing else to do.”
    â€œYou have to be here at eight fifteen. That’s when I leave.”
    Paul stood at the window and watched Mrs. Tuttle back her car out the driveway. It took her about a half hour to maneuver the huge shining vehicle into its going-home position. “She has more car than brains,” Paul remembered Gran saying once about somebody. Maybe she had Mrs. Tuttle in mind.
    â€œWell?” Gran said.
    â€œWell what?” Paul asked.
    â€œHow’d you like him?” Gran demanded.
    â€œHe’s O.K.” Paul started setting the table. “He’s going to walk to school with me tomorrow. He doesn’t have anything else to do. He says he can’t hack his grandmother. She brags about him and that gets him embarrassed.” Paul looked at her. “That’s one thing, Gran. You don’t have anything to brag about me to your friends.”
    â€œThat’s all you know.” Gran sniffed. “Fork goes on the left, not the right. I expected him to be a big boy. He’s not much bigger ’n you.”
    â€œNo,” Paul said. “He says his mother and father want him to be first in things. It’s important to them.”
    â€œThat must be quite a strain,” Gran said without expression.
    â€œI guess,” said Paul.

13
    â€œHey, you’re early,” Paul said when he came down to breakfast in the morning and found Gordon waiting, his face pushed against the glass in the kitchen door. “It’s only ten to eight.”
    â€œAsk him in,” Gran directed. She made French toast and cocoa for breakfast and a tuna fish sandwich for Paul’s lunch. Up until a couple of weeks ago, she’d made next day’s lunch the night before. “They get soggy,” Paul had protested more than once. “You try eating it.”
    â€œYou’re right, it is soggy,” Gran had said, making a face after she took a bite. That was the last time she’d made the sandwich ahead of time.
    â€œOn the way over,” Gordon said with his mouth full, “I saw a pileated woodpecker. I bet you don’t see too many of them around here.”
    â€œWhat’s a pileated woodpecker?” Paul asked.
    â€œIt’s a special kind with a big red crest on its head,” Gordon explained. “Very rare. In my bird book, it says they’re mostly found in the east and northeast. I’m going to be an ornithologist when I get out of college, I guess.”
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