I tipped against Dad’s yellow quilt. It smelled of lye soap and sun from being dried on a line. I still recall the scent as fully Dad’s. Seeing how Dix was yet visiting Mom, I felt an even higher level of guarding was due this fine man I’d come in with. Clyde pretended not to glance that way, but I knew how every pore on that side of his body became a form of eyestrain.

I felt shaky, as if something great would be expected of me soon. I found myself ready. Ready to do whatever to protect him. I felt that our driver had been hard on Dad about his speeding. The boy didn’t know how good Clyde was, or how many Bibles were in his trunk. I now blamed Mom for everything.

If she had not done that thing with the Animal Doc and got me in her instead of letting me be my true dad’s, everyone could see I looked like him. And even though I might have got a face catfishy, like father like son, folks would never doubt that I was his. That was the problem—not who or what color Clyde had been all along, but how quick I could become that with him.

If I had not said the thing straight out and made Dad cry then smoke then rush, if it weren’t for those crazy deers from nowhere, everything’d still be perfect. I could not abide my part in hurting him. Instead I blamed her for all of it, and vowed she would never get to harm him ever again. But I was just making Mom become the only bad part of the world. That just came from my feeling guilty and being so young.

Now his arm was broken, more help from me was needed. I would be like the Adult. Just as I had vowed to check on that dead dog Trixie day and night. Just like the Ohio man who’d blinked his lights to tell us where the cop hid, I would now take charge of signals. I would straighten everything out and get us past this habit of everybody hurting everybody all around them. Then Mom, Clyde, and me, we could start over clean. I simply had to clear the route. I would be the train’s cowcatcher, sweeping bodies off our silver tracks ahead.

Parked before the hospital, farmers helped husk the quilt off Dad. With his one working paw, Clyde gave them too much dinner money then offered handshakes to everyone, including the women; and I saw they appreciated this and that he knew the country way. Then I whispered and he bent down and nodded and I scrambled up into the towed car for its keys. I hurried to the trunk and brought out one black Bible for every helper-person present. I saw how this impressed them, it proved that we were not just careless city speeders, but sober citizens, important and God-prepared. I liked having come up with this and felt it showed I was thinking clear for everybody now.