Was he one sandwich short of a picnic? She had heard someone use the expression to describe someone mentally deficient.
It soon became clear why Buck's mind seemed to be elsewhere. Mrs. Genda began telling her story while Smoky, the couple's Golden Retriever with the long tongue and happy face lay on the wood floor between their wicker rocking chairs, licking a chunk of ice from their ice box.
"Buck and I met working at a high school in the Bronx over twenty years ago. He was a gym teacher, and I the school nurse. He'd always boxed on the side, for extra money but mainly because he just loved prize-fighting. After we married, he boxed a little too much, trying to earn more money than his teaching salary, so we could buy a little house."
Barbara wasn't sure Buck, still staring out into nothing, heard a word his wife said.
"He kind of wasn't himself after a while and couldn't keep his job at the school. The city was no place for him then, with just the sidewalks to walk, so we came out here. Bought this little place we call a ranch, and so far so good. We make it month to month selling chickens and eggs and renting a couple of horses and mules. Sometimes a tourist comes by who wants to ride up into the mountains around here. Guess that's why you came and found us."
Barbara nodded that was so. She both liked and admired Mrs. Genda, as she kept calling her.
"Call me Edna, and Himself Buck. Everyone does. Nobody around here would know who you meant if you said the Gendas.
Don't worry about Pa hearing or understanding what we're saying. He doesn't always drift off, but I can tell when he does. He'll be back before long and you'll never know he's been gone, he'll either be silent or rattle on about so many things. Thank the Lord he still can read the newspaper and listen to the radio.
I'm too busy around here to do either."
Edna turned in her rocker and asked him, "Pa, what'd you learn today?"
Buck had come back to them. "Radio said Ruth and Cobb just got named to the Hall of Fame."
Edna explained, not sure Barbara knew what he meant. "Buck's a big baseball fan. He means Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, in case you don't know. Anything else, Pa?"
"They're gonna electocute Hauptmann any day now, for killing the Lindbergh baby."
Barbara had read all the newspaper stories about Bruno Hauptmann being convicted of kidnapping and murdering her air hero's infant son four years before.