It had been a hard week, and after finishing up at sunset, Dusty and Flem headed down to Shooter’s pool hall to drink some beer and run a few tables before Momma came looking for them. Dusty knew Daddy would do his best to get good and drunk before Momma Lennie came to town and dragged that old man out by his damn ear. Right now, Flem Nix sat propped up in a corner chair, taking hits of a pint of Fireball from inside his paint-splattered Army coat. A cigarette hung loose out his lean face that reminded Dusty of a Halloween skeleton.

“Daddy,” Dusty said. “Get up.”

“Huh?”

“Get up,” Dusty said. “It’s your shot.”

Flem Nix grunted and got to his feet with much effort, catching the eye of a big, potbellied man in a gray sweatshirt cut off at the shoulders to show off his hairy arms and some bullshit tattoo of the Realtree deer colored in with the Confederate flag. The man’s gut hung far and wide over his work pants, lots of fat spilling from under his chin. The fat boy looked at Daddy and then back at Dusty and shook his head before leaning into the table and knocking two balls into a corner pocket.

“What you looking at?” Daddy Nix asked.

“Oh, hell,” Dusty said.

“Y’all brothers or something?”

“Who the fuck wants to know?” Daddy asked.

“Don’t get all pissy, little man,” the fat boy said, reaching up his fist to burp into it. “I just ain’t never seen folks built so low to the ground.”

“Do you know who the fuck I am?” Flem Nix said.

“Give me a minute,” Fat Boy said, rubbing the whiskers on his chin. “You kinda look to me like that little fella used to be on that show with Johnny Knoxville, always getting shot out of a cannon or having his nuts knocked with a sledgehammer.”

“Keep on talking like that and I’ll knock your goddamn nuts with my fist.”

Dusty ambled up by his daddy at the pool table and grinned, turning up a cold Budweiser. Thank the damn Lord that folks could drink in Jericho these days. He was already feeling good as hell after taking a couple of those back pills Momma give him and washing it down with some beer and a little cinnamon whiskey.

“Come on now, Daddy,” Dusty said. “This blubberbutt ain’t worth your trouble.”

“What’d he just say?” the fat man said. He turned to a black fella sitting nearby, smoking a long cigarette under a Bud Light neon sign. The black man’s eyes bugged out his head, his teeth as brown and crooked as an old rake. Although he didn’t speak, the black man blew out a big plume of smoke.

“I wouldn’t make my daddy mad,” Dusty said. “He may be little, but he’s fierce as a motherfucker.”