I am still trying to forgive myself. To know where I found the foolish courage to blurt all that aloud. Blame trust. Blame how tougher boys just taunted me at school. I hated fights. Even more than being hit, the hitting back sickened me. That in itself seemed proof that I was this man’s here. I believed that Dad could now hand me some one fact unassailable—a sentence that’d stop the bullies, proof to end such local savagery, which must always be a mistake, right?

…

Across my father’s face—and head and throat and upper chest—I saw a scalding pain born. That sudden. Two forehead veins bucked forth. He tried appearing in control, but I heard Dad’s breathing now rush out through his mouth. He no longer appeared jaunty; he seemed stripped of all the hope of comedy. He’d lost even the lingo of Salvation.

A guy, some odd arbitrary fish-mouthed atheist guy, sat looking at me. But he also seemed shrunken down to boyhood, backed raw into a corner. I now rode alongside another kid, too visible, somebody the worst boys love to torment daily.—“Fish Face,” I remembered now. As in a radio echo-chamber, I regathered all the taunts Clyde had ever endured, now and at my age and younger. As his whole life had flashed before his own eyes the moment Jesus penetrated his heart, Clyde Delman’s diorama of nicknames entered my life just as he was leaving it.

“Fish Face.” “Scrambled-Egg Lips.” “Dick Snout.” “Dufus.” “Nigger-nose.” “Bottom Feeder.” “Almost Monster.”

He slowed our car, he parked beside the road, he lit a cigarette. He smoked a quarter of it. It went nowhere in one sad sucking rush. He sat staring forward at two fallow fields. He said finally, “Welp, what can I say? Of course you’re mine.—You know you’re what I love best in this whole dern world. Y’do know that, don’t you, son?”

I nodded.

I could see how it was going to be with him, how decent he was, even when trapped, how good Clyde was fundamentally. Accused of rearing some worthless other man’s child, never once did Dad ask for gratitude. He claimed me absolutely, but never did he brag that he was more to me than just the one who loved me best. Again I nodded. Sick feeling. Wondering if I dared slide over now and touch him. I found I was afraid to chance that yet.

“When I say ‘son,’” his dark words cut through smoke, “I feel like every tiny bit or piece of me just knows you’re mine. Is all. Son. Even diaper changes—why, I’d almost welcome those. Your mom was usually off reading. You’d seem so much more comfortable after. And so I would … feel better. Understand? Look, a couple idiots in Falls say things.—Don’t you feel like you’re my boy?”

I wagged my head yes. “Am,” said I. “Just asked. They … I only …”

“Buddy? Ain’t I been good enough for you?”

“You’re the best thing. It’s not that….”