Everyone calls him the main man . . . a bad-ass motherfucker . . . and she’s always cryin’ after, ’cause he’s worse than all the others who’ve ever come around. Worse than Duane and even that Jerry Dix, who wasn’t all that bad, all things considered. He used to high-five Dillon and laugh this goofy cartoon hi-yuck and say stuff like Call me Jere, little bear, just like they were friends, best buddies. And sometimes when his mama was all partied out, Jere used to sit on the porch with him and share a Marlboro, watching winter stars through the trees.

Jere could even name two or three of ’em, which was more than his daddy could do, until his mama told him that Jere got sideways with Little Pairs, so Dillon figures he ain’t laughin’ now, not ever again.

But on the rare day when his mama’s not on her medicine, when she’s clear and her eyes shine bright as those stars, bright as that burning campfire, she can be so sweet and gentle it makes him cry, which ain’t no grown-up thing to do, although Dillon’s watched his mama cry plenty.

A day just like today, when his mama finally felt good enough to come watch him play for the first time this summer and even put on some of that Avon and brushed her hair and found herself some clean clothes and promised him today was a new day, just another one of a hundred or million promises that’ll never come to anything but somehow still mean everything, a million more lies this boy will always and forever be willing to believe and forgive, ’cause his mama was awake and present and calling him baby and he was gonna get in this one good day with her.

Until Duane had showed up stinking of beer and smoke and said he’d done got his hands on some of that new Glasser medicine everyone wants, everyone’s been going on about, so why don’t he just come on along for the ride and share a little taste?

But at least his mama held his hand crossing the gravel lot before the game.

Held on to him.

With that peckerwood Duane trailing a few steps behind, wobbly and barely there, drifting sideways like his cigarette smoke.

—

Dillon doesn’t even get to where the dirt infield turns to grass before Tanya, her own thick Avon a fresh mess, runs out onto the field, flabby arms wide—

“Oh, Dillon, honey, you don’t wanna see this.”

She goes to wrap him up in those arms even as he pushes past her, but she grabs at him again . . . calling him honey, baby . . . just like his mama does . . . just like his mama . . . and that’s when he knows it’s gonna be bad.

You don’t wanna see this . . .