His words came, loud and vehement. Raging and mad as a marine drill instructor preparing his soldiers for combat. Sid, pink-faced and nearly slobbering, had excused himself once again to go to the restroom, only to return arguing with someone who wasn’t there. His dead wife, Annie. Accusing her for what she had done to him. The child. That fucking child. What kind of idiot did she take him for?

Hunter had tried to cut off the booze, take Sid home, but he kept pleading—“One more, haven’t seen you in ages.”

Itch and Nugget traded expressions of concern. Asked Hunter, “What’s up with your buddy?”

All around them, other eyes stared, but no one spoke. Others sipped their alcohol, ignoring the ruckus as they carried on with their conversations.

Hunter said to Itch, “Not real sure. Bartender says this is par for him. My best guess, dementia.”

The other patrons seemed content to wait out the belligerent tirade, letting Sid’s lunacy flame and burn, waiting for the madness to peak, dwindle, and burn out.

Hunter excuses himself and gets up from the table. He walks over to Sid, whose mind is somewhere other than the VFW, lost in some tormented netherworld. Another time, another place. He takes Sid gently by one bony forearm. It is as if an electric pulse of rage travels through his limbs, through his body. Hunter steers him back to his chair and tries to calm him with words. “Sid, let’s get you back to the table, finish your drink. Head back to your place.”

Sid isn’t registering any of it. “I always thought the world of your father,” he says. “Then came that kid. You was gone. In the service, maybe. Can’t remember. God, it’s been so long ago.”

“Kid?”

“Blake. He’s a damn good son. Turned out better’n the other one.”

“By ‘the other one,’ you mean Travis?”

“Yeah, always too busy for his old man, playing golf with his buddies. But the other one, Blake, turned out to be a good kid. It’s just the way he was conceived that angered me.”

“Conceived?”

“It’s . . .” Hesitating, Sid says, “Complicated. Too heavy to talk about right now.”

Calmed by Hunter’s soothing tones, Sid is no longer stuck in the past. Hunter is done for now. He had paid Felicia for their final round of drinks, so he helps Sid out to the car. Drives back to Sid’s house. He had planned on crashing there. But now, with the crazed night and Sid’s back-and-forth arguments with himself, Hunter is leaning toward hitting the road, finding a cheap hotel. But then he thinks about how he and his dad couldn’t leave his grandfather unattended. He would need to call someone to stay with Sid. He wasn’t about to leave him to his own self-dismantling devices.