Mother drove slowly, not out of any sense of morality but because she feared for the safety of her children, and because the car had bad suspension and was difficult to handle around curves. When they hit a curve, David, sliding in his seat, imagined a long, strung together S and tried to guess where they were on it Very entertaining, this. Usually he sought relief from family tension by looking for the alphabet in signs on the roadside and on license plates (though he only had to resort to license plates on silent stretches of road and for difficult letters like Q, X, and Z). Here there were no signs, just grass and trees and men in gray police-type uniforms with forest ranger hats and walkie-talkies. Interspersed along the roadside were low tables of cut gray stone.

A white van came towards them. Mom slowed down and moved to the side to give a clear path, and in so doing brought the front tire into the curb. Teddy blew air through clenched teeth.

"Shi––  Mom, you didn't have to do that. There's room for two cars! That's why they have the white lines, see?"

"Do you want me to get into a head-on here? Don't you want to see your father?" This was the goal. Anything encountered along the way had to be weighed against it.

David noticed that the farther they drove the farther the stone benches were from the road, and the greater the concentration of gray men. The road widened into four lanes and a cluster of buildings came into view, of which he could clearly see only the first. It reminded David of a courthouse, except it did not have steps. Maybe a school building then. But school buildings also have steps.

The road forked into two a football field away from the buildings, and circled around in either direction until it met in front. Something like the head of a lollipop or a stick figure drawing. This circle was its head and the roads in were its torso and legs the arms had to be somewhere, they must have already passed them.

David notice the bodies in the car turn uncomfortable. Teddy hunched over with his hands between his knees, breathing through his mouth. Tony, who said next to him in back, scratched all over and kept looking out the window. A squirrel crossed the road and took its stance in the middle, and mother jumped on the brakes. David landed on his knees between the front and back seats.

"Goddammit! Jesus Christ!" Teddy said when they recovered. "You're going to kill us over a fucking squirrel?" He was seventeen and not really her son, so he could talk to her like that. "Let me out so I can walk."

Mother started driving. Teddy jumped out before the car gathered steam and landed on his shoulder. Out the back window David saw him gesture and throw a clot of dirt. He felt it was directed toward him alone, because he and Teddy with the only ones who knew it happened. But it was really at mother. In his head he saw Teddy throwing the dirt at him again and again, and each time it became more personal an attack.

Around the circle. They were above the lollipop man's eyebrow now in the buildings were a tousle of hair atop his head, or a hat. Mom stopped––Teddy was right, too fast!––in mid-road and unrolled her window. A man in gray––a much dingier and more poorly pressed uniform than the others, and without the forest ranger hat––was on the grass raking leaves.

"Excuse me," mom called. The man looked up, but in the wrong direction, and went back to his leaves. 

"Excuse me, Sir!" she said. He looked up again, this time making the effort to find out where the sound was coming from, and returned to his leaves. Mother honked the horn and another man, not the leaf-raker, came over. He was big and had a deep voice and crouched by the driver's side window so only his head and beard appeared above the door edge.

"Where can I park?"

"There's one hour parking to the south in two hours to the north."

"Which way is south?" mother asked.

Tony hung his head and let his lips drop open. "One hour!" he said to himself.

"Down that road, behind that building. Go straight and make your third right." Mother thanked him and he left without saying goodbye. David took a final look at the leaf-raker: still there. Mother punched in her emergency brake and turned around.

"Anthony," she said. "Get out and wait for your brother. I don't want him wandering around here." This he did, then slammed the door. What kind of instructions were these? Wait for your brother. No clues on what to say if a stranger spoke to him, like she gave David. My mother is around the corner in the store.... I'm waiting for my mother to get here.... Her name is Mrs. Gill, G-I-L-L. Or, when waiting at the checkout counter in a grocery store when all the items were run up but she was still out exchanging them: My mother will be here in a minute. Once she gave him a twenty bill and he gave it to the checkout girl.

The car rolled down a hill. The stick man's shoulder, he thought. His image of Tony slamming the door had slipped from his mind, and so he guessed had his mother's, because she stopped the car––making a quick backward glance to be sure Tony wasn't following them––at the bottom of the hill and turned to David.

"I don't want you to say anything to your father unless he makes you. Don't tell him anything about what you know." Her hand came off the steering wheel and she waved a finger at him. David nodded. "Understand?"

He nodded again and she drove on. Curiouser and curiouser, he said to himself, and he knew he'd read that phrase somewhere. Why would she stop the car here, since they had just stopped it a minute ago and would stop it again, permanently, in another minute? Why tell him not to say what he knew when he didn't know anything other than what some of his more vicious classmates had told him? Did she think that just because he was a family member, just because he was his father's son, he knew something more than what she had told him?

*     *     *

The building they parked behind looked small from the hill, but from the parking lot you could see its backside, and that it had six floors. The walls were gray and had thin waves of ivy. There were bars in the windows––thick and black, rusty-looking even from a hundred feet. This was a place for people who might want to jump out of windows. That was what Freddie at school said, who had a Polish last name with lots of Cs and Zs, and who had nearly strangled boy to death in front of the flagpole on top of the hill. He said they put bars up because they don't want you to jump out the windows, they want to keep you locked up in your room forever. But you would want to to jump out of windows. Oh yes. Freddy was older, but he had problems.

The hill was steep and mother more than once leaned her hand on David's shoulder, twisting him toward her and giving him the same backache she complained of. If he looked away from her he could see a man on a tractor cutting the grass. It was an image he'd seen before on a trip to a country museum in the fall. Dad drove that day, so he was stuck in the back seat with Teddy and Tony, and there were leaves that day too.

There was only a small door at the front of the building, but there must have been some hubbub inside because people rushed toward the door without looking sideways. Teddy and Tony stood a little to the left, each with his weight evenly distributed and one knee bent. Between them, ready to seize them both, stood a guard. As David and his mother moved closer, Teddy whispered something in the guard's ear.

"Mrs. Gill." It wasn't a question.

"Yes?"

"These are your sons?"

"Yes. And this one here."

"You shouldn't leave them unattended like that. Not here. It might cause an uproar. You never know what can happen."

"Yes Sir. I'm sorry. They got away from me." She pointed to Teddy. "This one insisted on leaving the car."

They followed the guard inside and he left again just as abruptly, with a snort. There was a hallway. They were going to see Daddy. One, two, three, four, his arms swung back and out to the side. He was too gay, mother would say the gravity of the situation. Not quite as bad as laughing at a funeral, but worse than laughing at church. Not as bad as death, but worse than what could happen in church.

Too gay. So he put his hands to his sides. Simon says. Ted had his hands in his jacket pockets and Tony had his crossed. He folded his like Tony, across his chest, and fingered his rib bones. He wondered if Tony did the same, invisibly. Mother stopped to read some signs and turned to them: her sour-faced, finger-wagging, "you wait right here" look. David was surprised she didn't call him along, since she took him everywhere else. Maybe she was going to the bathroom? When she said she was going to the bathroom it meant he didn't have to go with her.

"Well, Ton, what do we want to do?" Ted said. He pointed to the waiting room to their left. David came only up to their chests and could see their feet better than their faces, and their feet were so much bigger than his.

In the waiting room there was a guard. They sat in the farthest corner and read magazines. David picked up a copy of Popular Mechanics that had an ad for a hovercraft kit you could build with vacuum cleaner engines. Glides four inches over ground or water! The guard left. Teddy tore out a page of his magazine and suspiciously folded it into a football. Tony made David switch seats so he and Teddy could play football across the lamp table that connected their two couches. They usually played up to ten and you had to win by two. When it was eight-ten, Tony had a chance to stay in the game, but the football teetered over the edge and into Teddy's lap. David asked if he could play.

"You play winner," Ted said.

"But you just won."

"No I didn't. We are playing to ten. That was one round. It's one to nothing. New rules." Teddy smirked what mother called his devious little smirk. David returned to his hovercraft. Works on for car batteries! Guaranteed to be lighter than air! He remembered trying to pick up a car battery in the garage while helping dad fix the car and wondered how anything with four car batteries could be lighter than air. The man in the picture, hard at work with a screwdriver, seemed content with what he was doing. David read through the ad twice, then started counting letters. He got up to D–– there were fourteen of them––and it occurred to him to spell out his name in this fashion, and he had to go back to A because he had forgotten the count.

Mother returned with four orange buttons, which read VISITOR in tall white letters. David's had a chip in it. He poked the pin into the edge of his shirt pocket, then toyed with the idea of putting it on his floppy white collar. In mid-motion he reconsidered (mother would tell him kindly to remove it) and dropped it. It made no sound as it hit the carpet. David thought of the times he'd tried to set something on a carpet without making a sound. A plastic-based statue of a knight, for instance, or a glass left on the kitchen table. If it was square or rectangular he could let it down gently and tilt it to one side, letting one edge down before the other. If it was round, though, he had to swirl it around and imagine an infinite spiral that went on forever but somewhere intersected the floor. Eventually he would find himself grinding a circle in the carpet with the edge of the glass, which he could always hear.

They began walking away from the couch. The football lay on the table, half over the edge. David turned and waited for it to fall. Mother, who didn't want him straggling behind, took hold of his hand. Humiliated in front of his brothers! He wriggled his hand up so she was holding him by the wrist instead, even though it hurt his shoulder.

Desks and ringing telephones, people in offices, came and went. The building opened into a large hall, with high ceilings and windows at the very end. A nurse with the classic white dress and cap stepped into the light and bent to write something on her clipboard at the windowsill. Daddy? Dad? David pictured his father in the small end room nearby, his bulk crumpled up on a chair. She asked him a few questions and gave him pills and water from a tiny paper cup. He rolled the pills in his hand and popped them into his mouth dry, licked his lips, then shot down the water. She asked the questions again. Mmm. Nn. He nodded and looked at the sweat that seeped through his shirt at the navel. In the hallway the nurse wrote: Patient does not respond.

If father was in that room, then they were not going to visit him, because they passed through the hall to an outside door. Mother let go of his hand to open it and he hid behind his brothers. The size of their feet struck him again. Everybody in school thought he had big feet, because he wore size nines. "Act your age, not your shoe size," people said, and whenever he was around they laughed because his were one and the same. They didn't believe he had a brother who was thirteen and wore size thirteens, or another who was fifteen and had fourteens, though last year Teddy was fourteen and had fourteens. Dad was forty but he only wore twelves. Feet only got so big. Once they went to a shoe store and the salesman said something about joining the circus and though mom laughed, dad went outside. When they were finished they found him in front of the car kicking gravel.

On the other side of the door there was open air and sky. The door opened on a courtyard. On the opposite side he'd counted six stories high. On this side there couldn't have been so many or else how would the sun get in? He called the space a courtyard but he was sure the people here wouldn't call it one. Though if they were giving a tour they might call it that. He'd seen something like it before, on a slide in history class. It was called a palazzo and they had them in monasteries. This was where monks went when they weren't praying, and they sang in loud voices and laughed because they were happy.

Mother stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, just a few paces out the door. Like the hallway, the sidewalk extended far in either direction. From their left came a guard, dressed in blue rather than gray. He had a billy club and a gun and smoked a cigarette. He bent his head down to smoke rather than lifting his hand, which gave him a pained and desperate look at every puff. When he saw them he let the cigarette drop and crushed it.

"Mrs. Gill?" he said. Mother stared him in the eye for a dizzy moment, then nodded. "I'm Mr. Murrel. I'll be taking you around today."

A tour, David thought. He's taking us on––

"Your husband is in building C. We have to go through another building to get there. I advise you to keep an eye out for your youngest."

That meant him, that meant having to hold hands. Mother snapped her fingers and he was beside her in two strides. Just like the family dog! He could feel his brothers growling under their breath. That was twice she had forced him! But didn't he go voluntarily? Wasn't he moving toward her even before she snapped her fingers?

His monastic thoughts had gotten pretty detailed––down to a single monk, like him named David, who sat distracted in the palazzo reading some un-monkly material, while actually thinking about God in some vague wordless sort of way, and who responded to his colleagues with laughter even though his own mind was fixed on the private and the intangible. He left the monk behind when they got to the next building, which must have been building B, because the first one must have been building A. Mr. Murrel had to knock on the door to get in. There was another guard, fat and sweaty, above whose head a single shadeless light bulb lit up a hallway.

"Who's all this for?" asked the sweaty guard.

"Tommy," said Mr. Murrel, and he pointed.

"Mmm." The fat guy looked them over. He lifted his eyebrows when he looked at David, then turned and dug a thumb into his nose.

The hall opened into a wider one––like the locker room of the YMCA father had taken him to once––which was much noisier. It wasn't so much human voices as it was footsteps and coughs echoing. Most of the doors were closed: dull gray dented metal. Through the first door that was open he saw nothing but a doctor wearing glasses, talking to someone he couldn't see. The next door on the other side was also open, but before he could get a chance to see inside mother pulled him to her and pressed his face against the roll of fat between her hip and breast. He heard Mr. Murrel's keys jingling as he jogged into the room. Mother let him go but kept him pushed against the wall, so all he could see was the far end of the hall.

Mr. Murrel came out quite quickly. "It was nothing," he said. What was nothing? Something must have gone on in there or he wouldn't have run in so quickly, and mother wouldn't have grabbed him so firmly. David figured there was something more than what Mr. Murrel would tell them, because there was no disturbance, no matter how small, that could be taken care of in ten seconds. He suspected that something dreadful had happened, something so big that Mr. Murrel would want to escape from it and tell everyone he hadn't seen it. He had a perfect alibi. No one else––no other guards, at least––had seen him. A doctor had most likely been murdered.

Murder. So was murder, then. Hmm. At the end of the hall there was a door, then another hall that had windows on both sides, which meant that it connected two buildings, or two parts of the same building. On one side there was the parking lot, but he could not see their car. On the other side there was just a ten foot space between layers of glass, and then offices. Small doctors' rooms with scales and medicine cabinets like Dr. Rosen's office. At Dr. Rosen's, above the bed next to the framed, glass-covered chart on poison control, there was a message typed on yellow paper taped to the wall with aging scotch tape that would have come off with a good flick of the finger. Syrup of ipecac. In case of accidental swallowing, syrup of ipecac should be administered immediately to induce vomiting. David read it every time he was in the office. Read it many times over. With his hands underneath his thighs and legs swinging at the edge of the bed, he was in perfect knee-jerk position. With his head twisted over his shoulder to read the syrup of ipecac sign, on the glossy tape, on which he could sometimes see the lightbulb reflected from overhead. Mother would sigh because she did not enjoy waiting. But when they were in Dr. Rosen's office getting a prescription she would stay overtime and look at pictures of his son climbing glaciers in Wyoming.

Attention span! What a short attention span your child has, Mrs. Gill! This David heard outside the door to Mrs. Klein's classroom back in third grade, during a parent-teacher meeting. This was all he heard (it was the first thing Mrs. Klein said) before he was shuttled off by another teacher. After that mother never ceased to remind him, at least three times in the morning (to get him ready for the school day, he supposed) and once before bed (why?) to pay attention. This he also knew in German, because Mrs. Klein––who was herself from Germany––wrote it on the board her first day of class even before she introduced herself.

"Passen. Sie. Auf. That is German for, Pay Attention. My name is Mrs. Klein, German is my native language. I can speak English perfectly well, but for some phrases I am very fond of using the German. So when I say, Passen Sie Auf,  it means I want you to sit up straight, keep your eyes and your hands off your neighbors, and listen to me."

The first time she noticed him drifting off she would say, in a calm monotone from the head of the class, " David, pay attention." If he lost the flow more than, say, twice in an hour and a half, she would walk up to him, lay whatever book or chalkboard eraser she was holding on his desk, and say, slowly, "Passen. Sie. Auf." She had nice breath. She was young but already had a husband. Her name before she was married was Schumann and she was related to a famous composer, she said.

He promised his memory of Mrs. Klein that he would pay attention at least until the end of the corridor. His eyes remained fixed on the cinderblock walls at the end of the hall, which were painted over to look shiny. Then they fixed on the metal door, with some formerly shiny metal surface that had been kicked and banged and peeled. When Mr. Murrel opened the door they came upon an older section. He could tell because there was a breadth of tile for three or four feet above Mr. Murrel's head that existed nowhere else in the hallway. All the tile was still in place. You would have to take a hammer and jump up to knock the lowest one out of place. From the left a window let in light that shone on the tile.

"Watch it, sonny," said Mr. Murrel, for David had gone left toward the shiny tiles, and everyone else had gone to the right. He put his hand on David's shoulder. Another man's hand on his shoulder. Not heavy and callused like his father's but bony and light, all its weight concentrated in the fingers.When he turned he saw through the door chipped metal bars of gray and brown: the far end of the bunk bed. He had just noticed there were no sheets on the bed when he heard his father's unmistakable singing voice.

"Jack 'o diamonds, Jack 'o diamonds!"

This was definitely father. Mr. Murrel walked partway in. Teddy tried to look inside but was blocked by a shoulder. David could see between Mr. Murrel's arm and the door jamb. The walls were of small cinderblocks, almost like brick, and there were four bunk beds. In the far corner near a window, a man in the top bunk ran a finger up and down his nose and into the pits between his eyes.

"Tommy," Mr. Murrel said. "Your kids are here to see you."

"That so?" He sprang up in bed and stretched his arms wide. "C'mon Wally, don't keep me waiting."

"Would you want to see first, Tommy?" He twisted toward the boys and flourished with his hand.

"Let's see Teddy. First comes first. And none of this Tommy shit for me. I'm Daddy now, hear me?"

"All right, Daddy. Then none of this Wally shit for me."

"Right. Walter. Mr. Murrel. Let's see 'em."

Teddy, who stood with his hands deep in his pockets, slipped behind Mr. Murrel and stood embarrassed before his father. He wore a tan jacket with blue dotted lines crisscrossed to give a plaid effect. Teddy hated the jacket but David thought he looked good because it matched his blonde hair. He also knew the only reason Teddy didn't like it was because mom bought it for him.

"Get your hands out of your pockets. Aren't you gonna shake your father's hand?" Teddy took one hand out and gave it to father, who held onto it and rubbed it between both palms.

"Hmm. Rough hands. Been punching anybody lately?"

"Just walls," mother interjected from the hall.

"Walls, huh? She make you pay for 'em?"

"Every last penny. Equipment and labor, too."

"And you have to do the labor, right. That's crazy. You've got a do the labor and pay for it, too. The union would never allow it." He leered and showed his teeth: yellow. He turned to Tony. "How about you? Tony, oh Tony-o?"

Tony got past Mr. Murrel and stood beside Teddy. He shoved his fists into his pocket, then slumped against the wall. David could now squeeze in closer and see inside, but his brothers obscured all view of his father except his feet. Mother, he thought, should be more watchful of me. There she was against the hall wall, head bowed and pocketbook at her abdomen. Her eyes were closed and her glasses slid downwards, but she made no effort to straighten them.

"What's the matter, daddy didn't ask Tony to shake his hand?" Father looked toward Mr. Murrel. "Tony don't like it if Teddy gets something he don't."

David watched Tony's head fall. What a nasty thing for a father to say! David's own back and stomach muscles tightened and he felt paralyzed, ready to topple over backwards. Tony came forward. Father shook his hand solidly and without cynicism.

"What about him?" father called into the hallway.

"Just one, by the cellar stairs." Father nodded and looked Tony over from top to bottom. 

"Looking good. Playing football?"

"No dad. It's summer."

"Playing what, then?"

"Lacrosse."

"Got a girlfriend?"

"Yeah."

"What's her name?"

"Name's Kris. She lives by the highway."

"How old?"

"Fifteen."

"Ho ho! Big shit you are!" Father had no further questions and nodded in approval, prodding the air before him with his chin, like a goat. He seemed to like the motion and repeated it until he noticed that everyone was staring at him.

"Let's see Davey," he said, leaning into a crouch, one hand on the inside of each spread knee. David slipped past Mr. Murrel's leg, around Teddy, and past a drain hole with an easily dislodged metal grate. "Come here. Sit down next to daddy," father said. 

David sat with both hands folded between his knees––a gesture which, he just realized, he'd learned from his dad. Sometimes it was hard to imagine himself as his own father, but now it frightened him how easily he could sit before the rest of the family, scrunched down like the bigger version of himself that sat beside him. He pictured himself in gray trousers, then sat back, as far away from his father as possible, with his hands beneath his thighs.

"Next to daddy." Father pulled himself back onto the bed, collapsing the mattress with his fist and pulling David toward him. 

"How's things?" he asked. David nodded. It was that same goat-ish tilt of the chin he'd just seen from his father. Another gesture he'd pirated. "How's mom treating you?" 

"Fine."

"And how are your brothers treating you?"

"Fine."

"Good. Looking good. What size shoe you wear?"

"Nine."

"Nine! Look at that. Hey, Alie!" He shouted up to the man in the top bunk by the window, whom David had seen stroking his nose. The man grunted a bit and propped himself up on elbow. Alie looked like a normal person except for the several days' worth of beard and sweat caked up on his face.

"What's that, Tom?" Alie said.

"Look at my boys. This is Tony, Teddy, and Davey. Davey's got a size nine shoe and he's only nine years old."

"That's a pretty big boy," Alie said, and rolled over onto his back. Sound stopped and father found himself, again, in a mental hospital having just made a needless comment, and now everyone was staring at him. Mr. Murrel took advantage of the lull and walked back into the room.

"Well, Tom, looks like we're going outside today."

"Outside. Where outside?"

"Out front. You only get twenty minutes."

"Aw, c'mon Wally. Half an hour."

"All right, Daddy. Half an hour."

*     *     *

Outside, past the hallways and courtyard, David was so dumbfounded he could think of nothing to distract himself, save a brief tribute to his monastic namesake, still pondering God in the palazzo, though all his fellows had gone back to their rooms. Mr. Murrel was now clearly in charge. Father walked a few feet to his side, unnervingly kinetic once in sight of the trees. He skipped and threw his arms wide, and sometimes sang.

There were more men in gray now than there had been when they first drove up. Wearing gray in homage to his father, David first hoped, but that was a stupid idea. Why would anybody want to imitate that tall, emaciated figure, beaten down now and barely enjoying what little life he was allowed? Paltry, chipped beef enjoyment. It was Mr. Murrel who got the attention when they encountered other guards––Walt, who drew praise from their eyes with his cool demeanor, with the way he kept his charges in line.

Mr. Murrel slowed his walk as they neared a gray stone bench. It could hold the whole family, provided they sit back to back. Mr. Murrel guided them around––moving a body here, standing close by there––so that father and mother sat next to each other, with the boys crammed in a row opposite. David sat between his brothers again. He watched Mr. Murrel, who had clearly disassociated himself from the conversation, light a cigarette. Still bending his head deeply to it, not lifting it to him. Like a dog eating scraps from a dish. He set a foot on a rock and leaned over it to smoke.  

"Wally, got a cigarette?" father asked.

"Talk to your wife, Tom," he said, then inhaled heavily and blew a smoke ring.

"So." Father turned to mother, grim. "Honey."

Mom ruffled a moment and played with her pocketbook, then moved it from her lap to the bench and loosened her shoulders.

"I talked to Bobby," she said curtly. "They don't think you belong here but they can't help you with a job."

"Uh huh. And what does mom think of all this?"

"Your mom doesn't talk much. Not to me." 

"You ever think of asking her? Trying to get her to work on Bobby?"

"I'll try it, but I don't think it'll do anything."

"Why not?"

"Bobby and George don't think you'd be a good influence the way you are. Not so much the way you are, but everybody knows the stories."

"Mmm. Stories."

 "It was in the papers. How about you?"

"They say I'm doing okay. This one doctor said if I behave myself, I'll be out in two months. But it's hell in there. Like prison."

"Did you ever ask them to move––"

"It's like prison. They won't put me someplace else unless I do something stupid, which means I get isolation. Maybe if I kill somebody." He looked up at Mr. Murrel, who didn't look back.

"What about the halfway house?" mother asked.

"Can't, I'm still an inpatient. But the sooner I go home––"

"I don't know about that, Tom. I don't think it'd be a good idea for you to just sit around all day with nothing to do."

"God dammit!" he jumped up and sprang two paces away, causing Mr. Murrel to startle and lose his cigarette. His hand went straight to his billy club.

"Don't do that, Tom. You made me lose my cigarette."

"You hear what she said, Wally? She wants me to get a job, like that. Snap of the fingers. Doesn't want me home unless I got one."

"I don't see why not," said Mr. Murrel. "You keep saying you're not crazy."

"You tell somebody that. You tell my fuckin' brother that, he won't even give me a job digging ditches for lawn sprinklers."

"Better calm down, Tom, or we'll have to end this little session."

"Don't threaten me, Wally. I broke out of one place, no reason I can't break out of another."

Things subsided. Mr. Murrel lit another cigarette and went back to his rock. This time he sat on it, watching. Father crouched in front of the boys. With a twig he scribbled in the dirt. He cut it in half, then in half again. 

"So. How you boys doing? How's school?"

"No school, dad," Ted said. "It's summer."

Father crosshatched the circle, then drew a square around. "So what's she got you doing?"

"Nothing. Still doing the papers. I got three people delivering for me in my district. Tony's taking an auto mechanics class."

"That's so? Learn anything?"

"Nah," Tony said. "They're just a bunch of stupids. Mom bought me a VW engine and I'm taking it apart and put back together."

"Which one's harder?" father wanted to know.

"Putting it back together."

"No shit." Father poked David in the knee with his twig. "What about this guy?"

"Just reading all summer," Teddy answered.

"In the book club?" 

Mother turned around and answered for David, her slacks scraping against the concrete of the bench. "He's in a summer school class at the high school. It's for seventh graders. That means he gets to read anything he wants next year."

"That so? What are you going to read?"

"I want to read about dinosaurs," David said with some embarrassment, because dinosaurs were his big thrill five and six years ago. But now he wanted to know where they came from, like he wanted to know where everything came from.

"So it's back to dinosaurs, eh? Well, it's good to know somebody's interested in something. Is he playing his instruments?"

"Half hour a day. He's playing the clarinet. That's at the high school too."

"Clarinet, huh?" Father looked at him sideways. "Still playing the sax?" When David nodded, dad said, "You'll be the next Charlie Parker. The white Charlie Parker. Doot doot! Do! Dooooooo!" 

Then Dad wrapped his hands around an imaginary horn and made saxophone sounds: wild, deep, uncontrolled. Everybody stared at him again, then Mr. Murrel coughed loudly and crushed his cigarette underfoot. He shifted until everyone looked at him, then he looked at his watch.

"Well. My watch says it's eight 'til two."

"Your watch lies," father said.

"Sorry, Tommy, no lie. I've got to have you back by two and is a ten minute walk, so..."

"Not the way you march us, Wally. It'll take three minutes, tops. We can run."

"No can do, Tommy." 

"Oh, I see. It's two o'clock and Wally wants to go home and fuck his wife on a Sunday afternoon. I get it."

"That's enough, Tom," he said, running a finger across his throat. "I don't need your shit anymore."

This is the original version of the story (or as close as I'd let myself get when transcribing it). I later revised it for publication in as a broadside by Newshole in Denver (1993). For years I've had a revision note attached to the original that says David "Sees/dreams his father turning into the place––into slate that crumbles up into pieces." I'm going to throw that note away now. This story is as done as it will ever be.