my father was a Negro.

Not “a full-blooded Negro,” as we said then. But I knew—clear from my scalp to my scrotum—that, somewhere in his recent history, some one member of his family, had been…. Then I guessed “Aunt Sutie” was his mother, his father some white man submitted to or only half chosen. The railroad brakeman? I now saw in Pop their strange joined moment of forced entry or impossible romance. And Dad’s stiff hair, his skin’s high goldy undercolor meant something else forever. “There’s a lot of humiliation connected with it” now offered me far more. I knew why no townsfolk ever believed I could be Clyde’s. All this rushed forward, unscrolled itself at a child’s own fumbling stubborn pace.

But, last thing, in the bright flash as our Packard found air and literally left the road, I wondered, why oh why had I just used against him the word “REAL”—used it like a club? Not my REAL father. He’d been born to be a perfect dad! And, in every way but maybe one, he was.

Right then, with a sound like a house-sized nail being pulled out of a world-sized board, our car refound wet earth and curved so hard into its ditchward roll.

I was knocked out, or else kept my eyes closed through a white part then the blue part then a moister final black. But after a spell lasting one minute or half a day, eyes somehow freely opened. Funny, all the sound of it came last. Like one full season’s delayed memories: shots and rattles, the shatterings of some short eventful war played back to you full-blast.

After: some birds went right on singing, “tweettweeter.” Seemed a good sign. I tried to move, but felt my father’s weight pressed flat all over me. He had rung down like a stage curtain. You never know how big a loved one is till you try accepting his deadweight. I shook him and for the first time ever called him aloud “Clyde,” not “Dad.” But I think this mainly came from fellow-feeling, with our being now in such a scrape.

The mammoth Packard tilted on its side, tires spinning. Our missing windshield now opened only onto smeared mud, sudden plant life. Beyond a dark fringe of Dad’s hair, I could just see clear sky straight up and through the driver’s window. I tried crawling toward that, first depending on the handhold of the rearview mirror, then stepping over and breaking, with the noise of some huge egg busting, his plywood drink-caddy. But I scrambled out. Once I made it up to light, I looked down. It was like staring straight back into a well. My father rested at its bottom; he seemed dead asleep or dead, balled up down there indifferent.

I checked back along the road, surveying carcasses, two on tarmac, one half opened in a ditch. Past that, small people, those farmers, came running, big bigger still. They had been sitting on the porch and milling in the yard and had seen us and now they’d trotted a good half-mile. They must have heard. We must have just been pretty loud.