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Once, when I was seventeen, he’d punched ht I was going to die Stu over the coffee table as I fell just pissed hiain, but I ducked and he missed A first That made him furious, and he cas decided to unlock and let me live He kicked rown as tall as hihed ht didn’t enter ed and scared as hell

I threw a fist straight into his face, and his nose crunched just like anybody else’s Why that fact surprised me, I don’t know But in that n over ered and swung, ain For the first ti back I lashed out instead of cowering I hit instead of got hit

He was bloodied and gasping when I backed toward the door—laboring to breathe, inhaling and exhaling and alive and unhurt but for riain”

“Get the fuck out of my house!” he’d hollered, the weak squawk of an old man

“You won’t live forever,” I’d said, but he hadn’t heard me

I flicked the still-burning butt onto the seat of that chair, where it s down into the sand, leaving only a black-ringed hole I’d gone to pull ratifying whoosh as the seat went up in flames

I took a step back and pulled out another cigarette, lit and started it, watching that chair turn into a squarish pillar of fire that would soon be reduced to ashes

“Good-bye, Dad,” I said

Pearl

My hands gripped the wheel, and I took a slow breath as if I were psyching ht or dive off a cliff Southbound 181 renarled mesquites, andThe ing ot thefor er

A lifeti but the truth of who I was and the fact that soon everyone else would know I sed hard, reality tightening its fist around my windpipe

“Ma totheir impact on my own ears

I knew my mother well, and while I’d certainly disappointed her before— in an inevitable lack of leadership qualities, for example—this was disappointoal for oal forclarity, in thethe medical profession wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life