On the TV a lanky farmer wearing a wool cabbie hat clamps the nipple of a baby bottle in between his teeth. He sits down on a sofa beside a sickly piglet, which sets its pink, runny snout onto the farmer’s lap. An odd reticence between these two creatures, something like remorse. The cottage is dreary, the sofa shabby, and the snout veers away from the proffered baby bottle. Noon sun slices against the room’s shadows, but the brim of the farmer’s hat blocks the light, casting his face sorry, even a little scared. So quiet the shadows seem to creak. Then, with a voice like chalk, the farmer starts singing:

If I had words

to make a day for you,

I’d sing you a morning

golden and true.

I would make this day

last for all time,

then fill the night

deep in moonshine.

The farmer sings the verse one more time, his pillow-soft baritone gaining traction, conviction. A piccolo draws the farmer to his feet, both of which break into kicks, hops—a jig. Alone and exuberant, he stomps his heels, lifting dust from the floorboards and the pig’s snout from the sofa. A merry swill of strings and brass climbs into a crescendo and then boom, launching the farmer into a triumphant, slow-motion leap through the air, and when his feet thud back to the floor, they plunge Henry’s thoughts into a place so dark it’s creamy.

Those lyrics have gagged him. Even if there were words that could make a day for his son, how could Henry ever expect to access them? Right now, with the boy shaking and sweating in his arms, it’s impossible to locate even the most clichéd phrase of comfort or affection. It’s been a battle to provide the barest of necessities, but now language, too? Any attempt to speak gets mangled by his lips, so instead they purse and kiss the top of Junior’s head, ripe with a sour-milk musk. He embraces even tighter, tighter still, as if to absorb the boy into his chest and offer up his own health, his own heartbeat. The boy’s done nothing wrong, doesn’t deserve this. The boy—the birthday boy—deserves so much better, so much more. The child deserves mornings golden and true and glinting with opportunity. Nights like tonight. Nights of warmth, privacy, and safety, always and for all time, and deep in moonshine, which can’t be seen—the motel room’s curtains are closed.

Can’t tell whether the curtains are drawn shut to keep that land of plenty beyond at bay, or else to trap him and Junior right here.

Henry is right here.

That’s all he’s got to offer, to promise.

That’s the only truth he manages to pinpoint, then pin down. He wishes it could be enough, because it’s all he can say, and so he does.