I found I now knew more than I’d imagined. Just as our bad singing, Clyde’s and mine, usually blended, making it seem, not skillful, but full of forgivable spirit, so did our emotions and spillage now mix. I further dampened the front of a white shirt Dad’s crying had already wet. How translucent it became, one oval air bubble trapped under there and backed by his olive skin.

I felt some rage kindling now, anger over the level of harm done him, not only by Mother and myself and her fancyman, but by everyone who’d ever yelled mean things at Dad from passing cars. I hated every dope who’d ever laughed about a homeliness I now found narcotically endearing. Dad had guarded me all my life, with his life. And so would I ever after do that for him. This, I vowed. Finally I leaned back and the car horn accidentally blared and that, at least, let us laugh.

“Fine pair we make,” he wiped my eyes with a hanky featuring two Scottie dogs wearing plaid neck-bows and facing one another. “Yeah,” he shook his head. “A fine mess us Bible B-52 Birdmen has gotten ourselves into this time, Ollie! So—dry off your sweet ole snoot, you. What say you to a Dairy Queen special dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts big … as my demonstrators here, hmm, copilot?”

“Yes, sir, Dad!”

I saw we were done talking. Done, I felt, forever. He smiled but it was now a fixed, ceramic item, mail-ordered. The new grin seemed ill-fitting as some stranger’s cut-rate dentures shoved in hard. This was, I slowly understood, no more than Clyde’s weekday-salesman smile. He’d never before turned loose on me anything so slack and standard. This was not the usual trembling jokey sweetness reserved for me alone. Clyde had always taken such joy in every little thing I did—did well, or badly, it didn’t matter. I had never seen him so upset. His trying not to show it only made me love him more.

“Here, you ole weed-fiend,” I plucked cigarettes from his shirt pocket. I pounded the pack’s top against our dashboard the way us kids knew to do from watching adults and all their ads. One white one slid forth, attractive. Even his Camels wanted to cheer our funny man Clyde here. He laughed because, in trying to light it, his hands shook so. I had to fire the thing up for him. Took me four strikes before I got it truly lit (“not in your mouth, handhold it,” he ordered). Then I set the cigarette, proud, against his twitching lower lip. His eyes were wet, the lashes bunched. His pale-brown eyes looked, I told myself, almost handsome up this close. I made my own eyes go a little out of focus as a help. And when I touched his face, it felt softer than any woman’s.