The brothers continued their work, and Joseph took their indifference as the invitation he had been waiting for. He slalomed down and took a place on the bank, standing with his hands balled in his pockets. Tony continued jamming pieces of Styrofoam into the gaps beneath the platform, and Ronnie kept hammering. Joseph took the liberty of fishing the cigar case from the root system of a nearby cedar and plucked from it a pack of stale Winstons. He casually lit one and kept watching.

“How’s the firefighter?” Ronnie said, still not looking up.

Joseph’s father was a fireman, which made him an object of interest among the older boys. For Joseph, he was a source of fierce pride.

“He saw a bear,” Joseph reported.

“I thought he saw one last year,” Ronnie said.

“There’s lots of bears out there,” Joseph said. “He’s in the middle of bear territory.”

“You like felching, Joe?” Tony said.

Joseph appraised the question. He had never heard of felching before. But it didn’t really matter. The proper response was double-edged, an ironic admission of ignorance attached to a slight change in terms.

“Love it,” he said. “But only on weekends.”

The boys laughed. They liked him. He was a good student of the rules.

“So are you ready or what?” Tony said. “You going to kick some ass tomorrow?”

“I guess so,” Joseph said, tapping a long ash onto the ground.

The following day, Joseph was scheduled to fight Michael Hollingsworth. There had been no argument between them, no slight or misunderstanding, but they were going to fight nonetheless. The older boys had issued a decree, and as the two youngest kids in the area, Joseph and Michael had no real choice.

The past weeks had been devoted almost exclusively to preparation for the fight. A betting pool had been organized. A training regimen had been established, including exercises such as shadow boxing, push-ups, crunches, holding one’s hand over a candle until it was too painful to continue, and eating raw eggs in the morning. The week before, Ronnie and Tony had loaned Joseph and Michael jump ropes and forced them to carry heavy logs from one end of the junkyard to the other, among other activities inspired by the training sequences in Rocky movies.