That night at The Mule Kick, I came home wasted like I said. The dark center of a black-out drunk. That I got the car home is a miracle, but not one granted by any benevolent God. I should have died coming home, and wish I had. Driven off a cliff and become cremated in the wreckage. How’s that for rock and roll?

Rox had started crying as soon as I got home. Could have been the slamming of my car door that woke him up. Or the front door. Or when I turned on all the lights. Or when I slammed the fridge door shut. He was only seven months old. Born prematurely, he only weighed fifteen pounds. I could cradle him in my arm like a Nerf football. The junior-size kind.

Okay, if I’m going to do this, let me really do it. Here’s the reenactment that plays like a bad home movie in my mind, Rox’s screams the haunting soundtrack.

“Fuck,” I moan from our closet-sized kitchen, shoving week-old chicken tenders into my mouth. “You kidding me?”

Watch me shuffle to the crib in the corner of the living room. I want to quiet the kid before Casssie wakes up and starts nagging me. Once the kid really got going, his wails could crack a window.

“Shh.” I’m grabbing for the baby. “Little man, please. Shhh.”

See me pick him up and stagger back, holding him at arm’s length. Little Rox, wailing like Robert Plant singing ‘Whole Lotta Love’. Then I right myself and cradle Rox like I’m some fullback looking for a hole in the D-Line. A lion couldn’t roar this loud.

“Shhh!” I try and get him to gum my finger. It does nothing more than inoculate him against a host of undocumented germs.

I think I hear Cassie wake, and prepare for the pending fight. “Jesus, Jesse! Why do you have to make so much noise! Why do you have to stay out so late! When are you going to get your shit together! How fucking selfish can you be!” I don’t want to hear any of these incriminations from her, because I already say them all to myself, and I hate being teamed up on. So I’m desperate to quiet him now. Maybe I’ll just put him back in the crib and let her deal with it when she comes out to check on the noise. And it’s in my rush to return to the crib that I stagger and trip, triggering my reptilian instincts for self-preservation. My arms flail out for balance, and I let Rox go. Send him flying through the air in my drunken stumble.