She closed her eyes. Not long. Just for a second. When she opened them, she was looking at the field again, at the sprinklers going around.
"Wyn," she said. "Is he all right?"
It was a strange question, and it was asked in a strange voice, and Tavo did not know how to answer it. He thought about Wyn walking from his truck that morning, the way he walked like his feet hurt. The thermos. The way he sat on the curb with his eyes shut.
"He works nights," Tavo said. "At Sorensen. The grain place." And then, because she was still waiting: "I think so. I think he's okay. He comes to the park every morning after his shift. He's been helping me. Three years."
"Three years," she said.
"He painted the square. On the wall. The top corner square." He hesitated. "He says what you said. Show me what you got. Every morning."
She laughed then, one short breath out through her nose, and it was not a happy laugh exactly, but it was not a sad one either. "Well," she said. "He got it from me. And I got it from a woman named Mardell Okamura who coached me at Fresno State in nineteen eighty-eight, and God knows where she got it." She rubbed her knee again. "Do you know his last name? Wyn's?"
"No."
"You've been working with him three years and you don't know his last name."
"It never came up."
She looked at him, and he could see her deciding something, and he could see her not liking the decision much.
"It's Brackett," she said.
He did not understand for a moment. Then he did.
"Torin," he said.