mother and joked with her in an impudent way ... and she rebuffed him,
not really meaning a rebuff, of course ... and he startled her by
pulling off his hat and grotesquely showing himself to be entirely bald
... for he had grown bald very young--at the age of sixteen ... both
because of scarlet fever, and because baldness for the men ran in his
family ... and he was tall, and dark, and walked with rather a military
carriage.

* * * * *

I was four years old when my mother died.

When she fell sick, they tell me, my grandfather did one of the few
decent acts of his life--he let my father have a farm he owned in
central Kansas, near Hutchinson. But my father did not try to work it.

He was possessed of neither the capital nor knowledge necessary for
farming.

He went to work as clerk in a local hotel, in the rapidly growing town.
Crazy with grief, he watched my mother drop out of his life a little
more each day.

* * * * *

My father and mother both had tempers that flared up and sank as
suddenly.

* * * * *