"I know so," said Zoli. "Pista would never miss it. Not this one."
Aunt Yolie looked at him for a long moment, and something in her face went soft and settled, and she reached over and took his big, rough, flour-dusted hand in her small one.
"You are a good boy, Zoltán," she said. "You were always a good boy. Even when you were so little and so sad on that bench. I told Pista, that one, he will be a good man. You watch."
Zoli didn't say anything. He couldn't. He sat there holding her hand with his head down and his shoulders shaking, not making any sound at all, and Ossie looked down the track toward Front Street, and that was when he saw the tow truck turning in off the road.
It came slowly, crunching on the gravel, a big rusty wrecker with FERKO BROS. TOWING hand-painted on the door. It stopped a little way off. Sandor Ferko got out of one side and Teri Belinsky got out of the other, and they both stood there by the truck and looked at the three people on the broken bench on the old platform, the old woman in her hat and the two boys on either side of her, waiting.
Ossie saw his mother put her hand over her mouth. He saw Sandor Ferko look at his son, sitting there with his head down holding an old woman's hand, and he saw the big man's face do something complicated, and then he saw him take off his cap.
Sandor Ferko walked up the gravel to the platform with his cap in his hands. He did not hurry. He climbed up onto the concrete, slowly, the way a big man climbs onto something that might not hold him, and he stood in front of the broken bench, and Aunt Yolie looked up at him with polite and puzzled interest.
"Mrs. Kertesz," he said. "It's Sanyi. Sanyi Ferko. Ilona's husband."
"Ah," said Aunt Yolie, who clearly had no idea. "Yes. Good afternoon."
"Can I wait with you?"