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….”

“You must know, son, I’d give my life for you. And it’s not just something I say to be saying a thing. You should understand how … much I’ve … already … who all I had to …” And here his head bobbed more my way. He made his mouth open wide like some bird dog yawning. Dad resisted showing how bad I’d made him feel. Even so, he let me guess how much I had already taken from him.

—Maybe the belief in something is the thing? The main part of it.

Dad now rested one bone-thin arm along the top of our seat. He had turned almost totally toward me.

“Son, come sit in your real poppa’s lap. We got us some time to burn here. Even with the Colonel being so far off, we’re still running mighty early, us Birdmen in the air upside down. Really upside down today, huh, champ?” So fast then, I climbed over and he took me up onto his legs, he closed his stringy arms around me. And pressed me hard, almost too hard, against him, as if, now he knew what I’d guessed, I must soon be taken from him. He acted like our touch must be forever after rationed.