She shook her head again as she stubbed out her smoke and then took a drink from the can before saying, “No, I didn’t see her then. It was a phone call. She called me late one night, long after I had already gone to bed. That was about two months ago.”

I thought for a second. At least this was something.

“Joree, do you have a house phone, or do you use a cell phone?”

She looked at me for the first time. “Just a cell phone,” she said. “We ain’t got no house phone.”

“Do you still have the bill from that month? Can you find it?”

“Yeah, I b’lieve so,” she said, rising from her seat and looking about the room. “I should have that bill around. . . .”

At that instant the door to the next room burst open and Junior came crashing out. He was struggling into a jacket as he stormed through the room.

But turning to his mother, his face reddened with emotion, he shouted in a choked voice, “You need to leave it alone, dammit! Just leave it alone! She’s gone, and no matter what you do, she ain’t comin’ back!”

“Junior! Honey! Wait. Don’t go. Stay here and tell Mr. Tanner what ...” she called impotently to his back. But Junior had already slammed the door behind him.

Joree ran to the door and, throwing it open, was just in time to see her son jam the truck into gear and, wheels spinning wildly, shower the side of the trailer with a geyser of gray mud.

Joree stood in the door and watched the truck slewing crazily across the yard, mud flying in all directions. Tearing down the drive, Junior and his new red truck were out of sight in just seconds.

Joree closed the door with a sigh of resignation and, giving me an embarrassed glance, crossed the room to sit once again at the end of the sofa. She lowered her chin to her chest and mused a bit before saying, more to herself than to me, “I’ve done everything I can think of for that boy, and nothing seems to work. I just don’t know what else to do.”

I, too, was thinking along similar lines, wondering how the chain of pathologies within dysfunctional families can be broken, and whether or not it can ever be changed for the better. The only answer I could come up with was: No. It seems to go on and on without end.

Poverty, combined with a disdain for education and willful ignorance, a life view based almost solely upon immediate satisfaction of the base appetites, layered with the loss of real jobs and consequently a loss of hope—all these factors have coalesced to produce an American underclass that is almost impervious to help of any kind.