A Man's Life

Cal had a painful wave of something he hadn't experienced before. He would have liked to sleep then, but sleep too seemed beyond his reach. After a while, he put his head down on the cushions and let his mind fall into a series of difficult thoughts which he labored over. At one point, something from years ago came back to him. His mother standing at the gas cooker making buttermilk pancakes, turning them on the grid. She must have been near 60 years of age at that time, as she had married late. All three of them had laughed heartily, and kept on laughing while she picked the pieces of the broken plate up off the floor. If part