He slows down and finally stops altogether between the bases, hands still raised like he’s asking a question that’s got no answer.

Then he starts up again, shuffling past the pitcher’s mound to see for himself what all the damn fuss is about.

—

He’s always been fine with Duane whuppin’ up on him, but not his mama.

When it happens, and it happens way too much, he knows just how it feels to get angry or crazy enough to shoot up a school full of little kids who didn’t do nothin’ to no one or burn this whole damn town down.

His whole world.

Duane’s no good and it’s all just partyin’ and fightin’ now anyway that his real daddy’s gone. This past winter his mama forgot to pay the electric for two whole months, and Dillon had to sleep wrapped up in one of his daddy’s old coats but didn’t mind so much ’cause it still smelled like him, like cigarettes and beer and aftershave, safe and familiar. He found some old oak leaves and chewing-gum foil in one pocket, two white pills he sold to Junior Heck in the other, and hidden in the lining a never-used Bluegrass Blowout ticket that he still holds on to and believes is worth a hundred or maybe even a million dollars. So much money he can’t even guess what it might be, but he’s afraid to scratch it off and see, ’cause if he’s wrong, it’s like he’s done scratched away the last bit of something good in his life.

So he just carries that stupid worthless ticket around all the time. Holds it tight the same way his daddy held his hand ’round that campfire and the way he tries to hold on to his daddy’s stories and the flickering, fading memories of his face.

’Cause as young as he is, he already knows just how easy it is to forget.

Like when his mama’s hurtin’ and hard on her medicine and she damn near forgets him, even though she tells him all the time he looks just like his daddy, so much so it makes her cry. But his face don’t mean much to her when she’s sick like that, when the hurt is so bad she can’t remember anything else, whispering how she needs that medicine . . . needs it so bad, baby . . . ’cause that pain’s like a toothache and a stomachache and a headache and a whole lotta heartache all at the same time.

It’s endless.

She needs it something fierce . . . and that means she sometimes needs a peckerwood like Duane to get it for her. She calls Duane Doctor like it’s a joke and they all have a good laugh at that—good ol’ Doc Duane, who never even finished high school.

But other times his mama goes alone to see Little Paris.