“My boy is going to be a star,” he said once, carrying me around the yard on his shoulders. “Hear that crowd cheering for you? Everyone’s going to know Julian Jackson: the best quarterback in Texas.”

I don’t remember anything about my mother, who left us just weeks after I was born. And I really don’t have a ton of memories of my father, either, but that one is really bright.

I touch the chain-link fence that separates the yards on Kirkland Road. I wish I could see him as vividly as I sometimes remember his voice.

I notice that the woman who lives in the house now is sitting on the front porch, a tattered paperback in her hands.

“Afternoon, Julian,” she says without looking up, her glasses perched near the end of her nose.

“Afternoon, Miss Jean.”

“Some tea for you?” She points to an ice-filled pitcher next to her without lowering her paperback.

“No time this afternoon, Miss. But thank you,” I answer.

We have the same exchange every time I take the long way home and she’s there. I never say yes, and she always asks. I wonder what would happen if I did say yes one day. I haven’t been in the house since the morning my father died.

I reach the end of Kirkland Road and throw a look over my shoulder at the house at the end of the street before I turn onto Main and head for home. The sharp contrast between the quiet of Kirkland and the bustle of Main Street is jarring. I’m walking at a snail’s pace now. Without the woods for shade, the sun beats relentlessly on my back, and I can feel the sweat running down toward the waistband of my shorts.