“Pop,” I said. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Pop lit his pipe and leaned back in his old rocking chair. I was sitting on a bait bucket. The whole house smelled like mudbugs and pipe smoke and fish. I was about the happiest a kid could ever be.

“Why’d Mom run off on you like that?” I said. “Why’d she leave the swamp? Why’d you let her take me with her?”

Pop thought a minute.

“Now that’s a tough question right there, Buddy,” he said. “That might take more time to answer than I got tonight.”

“Aw, come on,” I said. “You can’t say one word about the subject?”

Pop smiled his gold-toothed grin real big and whipped a deck of cards out of his back pocket. He fanned them out wide in his hands.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Pick a card, any card. Go ahead now, I won’t look.”

He shut his eyes and turned his head, all dramatic-like.

I wished Pop would just tell me instead of making me play a game like this. But then again, wishing my daddy was any different than he was was about as useless as wishing the moon would turn purple. All I could do was play along and make the most of it.

I took a good long look at those cards. They weren’t normal cards, the kind you play poker with, clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds, all the court folks. No, these were special cards. They were Parsnit cards, the best and most noble game in all the world.

I loved Parsnit cards. They were like playing cards, but they had pictures on them, and you were supposed to tell a story with them. Whoever told the best story won the Parsnit duel. It was a tough game, mind you, and only the best, smartest, cleverest folks ever played it. I remembered Pop and his friends, the whole gang of them, hollering and clapping and telling stories about the wildest duels they played and saw. A true Parsnit duel required the presence of a witch. It was dangerous and mysterious business. You were taking your life in your hands if ever you played Parsnit.

I looked at Pop’s Parsnit cards, immaculate and bright in his grubby fisherman’s fingers. They didn’t have a speck of dirt on them, as if he cleaned them every night, as if there was something magic about them.

“Go on,” said Pop, his gold tooth flashing and his eyes shut. “Pick one.”

I picked the Fish Boy. He was a sort of short peasant kid who looked normal, wearing normal clothes, and he held a wooden cup in his hands. And popping out of that cup was a great big catfish, glowering at him, whiskers whipping this way and that. The boy looked scared, his eyes all bulging and goggle-like, and all around him people were gasping, their hands at their mouths. All of them recoiling in fright, or else pointing to laugh. It was a scary card, and a sad one. I don’t know why I picked it, but I did. There was something about it that felt true to me, like maybe I knew how the Fish Boy felt.