Then Pop stated again, as he did on certain Sundays, “Your mother’s a mighty excellent woman.” I grunted, bored of hearing this. My eye and forehead throbbed, especially if I turned my head his way too fast. Neither of my parents, pressing ice to me, had dared ask why I fought. I tried not remembering what the bully said to me before I hit him and he hit me worse and I then tried talking sense. He sangsong loud at me, “My dad says you’re just one more trick out of Doc Dick Dix’s big ole dick, is what Pappy called you.”

It’s not a phrase you’re likely to forget. Not when you’re the little mongrel-bastard they say it of.

Now I slid over. Across the flannel car-seat toward him. Lately I had chanced this less and less. But today I laid my head into Dad’s lap. Looking up at him from below could be better than our trip to the Norfolk Aquarium. Upside down, Clyde’s face became all flaps and bones and yesterday’s Nu-Grape traces. From here, even his good-natured singing of hymns sounded wonderfully upside down, almost okay. Dad was that splendid and rarest of “novelty items”—a good man. Maybe they’re the ones most destined to be disappointed by this meanish Bible-swiping world?

He soon let me “drive.” “Got to earn your keep, chauffeur boy.” Below his loose one-handed grip, my fists tightened on the wheel. His sharp leg bones contained then forgave my weight, some streamlined ashwood sled I slid along on. Usually I resented his huge feet working my pedals. Today I felt content to let Dad do all that down there.

…

With so many Testaments to give away, we’d left town by eleven. Our first stop proved disappointingly close to Falls. Pop visited a desk clerk proud of his two card tables’ jigsaw puzzles: mostly Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, either coming or going, and of absolutely no interest to me.

So I explored behind the Whispering Pines Deep Sleep Cabins. I had a feeling I would find some major cluelike event. Today’s agitation came partly from the hurt eye, partly from my fear of Monday’s far-worse schoolyard charges, names I could neither explain nor ever quite deny. I dreaded our teacher’s panic every time I said four nice words toward Berta Dix, or when I’d once handed her a small red dime-store valentine.

Most of what I knew was this: I, Clyde M. Delman, Jr., did not want to be anybody else or anybody else’s son.

I would find a way to prove and stay it, this, his.