“We sump-pumped it the hell outta there but all his stuff kept laying around on the floor, gathering mildew. Looked like a damn disaster zone down there. Clothes stretched out like dead bodies. His fishing gear, old leather jackets, Indian saddle blankets; everything stinking and rotten. Musta laid down there a good three months or so just moldering away.”

“Yeah, I remember the stink. You couldn’t open the door or you’d get it in the face.”

“That’s it. Well, your mother—bless her heart—she, one day, took it into her head to scoop the whole mess up with a snow shovel and stuff it into boxes. Friend of hers helped her—that ‘Kitty’ or whoever she was; worked down at the Kmart by the highway there. She came over and helped. She’s the one who brought the boxes. Two of ’em got plowed to the gills on cheap vodka and Kool-Aid, giggling their damn heads off and playing loud music. I had no idea at the time what the hell they were up to. Then that giant moving van shows up with the big green Mayflower boat painted on the side of it. You remember that?”

“No, I don’t remember that. Where was I?”

“I have no earthly idea. Maybe in school. Probably that.”

“Probably so.”

“Well, anyhow, your mother has the whole kit and kaboodle shipped out there COD to Arizona where he was shacked up with that new girl of his.”

“Who, Dad?”

“Yes. ‘Dad’! Your father. Somewhere in Arizona. I forget.” The old man starts cackling and hacking at the same time. He flicks his Pall Mall but the ash misses and floats whole to the floor. “I’d have given fifty bucks to see his face the day that moving van showed up at his door! And here he thought he’d got off scot-free with that new woman of his.”

“I must’ve been in school. I don’t remember any of this.”