“I want another.” He flicked the glass forward and my mother had to catch it to keep it from flying over the bar’s edge. She didn’t object, merely poured him another, and he took it as he had the first. He slammed the glass down, thus garnering everybody’s attention.

“Another.”

“Jesus Christ, Mark, what are ya tryin’ to do?”

“I’m tryin’ to drink a shot.”

She rolled her eyes, sighed, wiped her hands down the front of her shirt. “Sure, I’ll get ya another. But it’s the last one.”

He kept his fingers around the glass while she filled it. He took it the second she pulled the whiskey bottle away.

“I guess I don’t need to ask you how your day was,” she said.

He looked at her so fiercely that I felt uncomfortable sitting beside him. She shook her head, walked away. I stayed beside him until I could no longer handle the silence, could no longer stand looking at his hand white-knuckled around his beer mug. I hopped from the stool, pushed it in, began walking toward Danny and my mother.

“Where ya goin’?” he asked when I had taken my second step.

“Nowhere,” I said. I turned around and climbed back up. I was scared to look at him and instead eyed the dollar bills on the mirror, searching for the ones carrying my own name. I had found two when he spoke.

“How was school?”

“Good.”

“Learn much?”

I shrugged. “I think so. How was work?”

He snorted. “Work’s really fuckin’ up my world.” He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, breathed the smoke out his nostrils. “Just make sure you study real hard so you don’t have to deal with this bullshit.” I wasn’t sure what bullshit he was talking about, and sensing that, he took it upon himself to tell me. “Goddamn hands so filthy they won’t never come clean, breaking your back for shit above minimum wage,” he said, leering down at my mother. “A wife who don’t work in no bar and wouldn’t fuck the first man that said hi.”

I looked over at him. He wasn’t a large man, standing five feet nine, slender though muscularly defined. He had blond hair just long enough in the back to be worn in a ponytail, the top and sides clipped short. He finished his cigarette, lit another, threw his Zippo onto the bar and watched it clatter away, the sides and corners of it worn to the brass.

“Momma wouldn’t do that,” I said.

He snorted a second time. “Wait a few years before talkin’ ’bout shit you don’t know nothin’ about.” He looked down to where she was laughing at something Danny had said. He shook his head, said, “Fuckin’ whore.”

Hearing those words brought tears to my eyes, though I remained silent.

“Why you cryin’?”

“I’m not.”