“Oh,” North’s father said. “It’s you.”

Righting the fan, North said, “You’re smoking.”

David McKinney grunted.

“If you want this fan to do anything, it can’t be sitting on the ground. It’s too small and too low.”

“That fan is older than your freckled ass, and it’s always worked just fine. Did you let the cats out?”

“Haven’t seen them.”

“It’s your ass if they got out.” Dragging the tank with him, he tottered to the window, parted the bent and battered blinds, and wheezed. Then the blinds clinked shut, and he stumped back into the house proper, leaving North on the sun porch.

North propped the door open, found the cat treats under a sofa cushion, and sprinkled a few on the floor. Then he followed his father, passing the kitchen—piles of bills on the counter, a microwave roughly the size of a pony, dishes piling in the sink. The dishwasher had been pulled out from under the counter, hoses spilling like ruptured viscera. Here, the ever-present cigar smoke had to fight with a burnt-grease stink that reminded North of a childhood of blackened grilled cheese sandwiches.

In the living room, at the front of the house, he found his father in the same patched recliner, in front of the same console TV (circa 1992), with the blinds shut and the lights off so that the wisps of sun that managed to reach the room were immediately gobbled up by the smoke. Four folding chairs surrounded a card table—one leg had been broken by North in childhood, during a particularly vicious round of cops and robbers, and was now supported by two milk crates and a stack of 1989 Penthouse magazines. North dragged one of the folding chairs so that it paired with the recliner. Between him and his father, a cigar smoldered in an ashtray.

“I’ll buy you another fan.”

His dad coughed—an awful, tearing sound that went on for minutes—and waved a hand.

“How are you doing?”

David McKinney’s eyes were like the water in the River des Peres: a glisten over cold cement. He punched a remote, and the music from The Price is Right swelled.

“Have you been going to see the doctors?”

“I’ve been going.”

“You want some fresh air in here? Some sunlight?” North twisted in his seat. For what was probably the thousandth time in his life, he gave up smoking right then and there. The disorientation of this place—his home, his childhood, and yet not at the same time—never got any better. “You want me to crack the door?”

“You want to make yourself useful?” North’s father gave another of those awful, wet coughs again and fiddled with the dial on his tank. “Get me a beer.”

North bit the inside of his cheek. After a minute, he stood and stepped past his father.

“What the fuck is this?” David McKinney rasped, catching North’s jacket and dragging him to a stop. Something ripped at the back, and when North turned around, his father was holding a wrapper with Ask me about my printed in black Sharpie above the words Ding Dong.