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Daddy.
    Daddy and Mr Dunlop were talking to each other across the creek, so I didn’t catch everything they said, what with the gurgling water and my hanging back, since I wasn’t supposed to be spying on them, but it was something to do with land and great-grandaddies. Daddy raised his voice after a time, saying Mr Dunlop didn’t know what the h-e-double matchsticks he was talking about, and Mr Dunlop, a sly look on his face, actually walked into the creek so he could hand Daddy an old brown piece of paper. “Now that’s what I call history!” I hated the smirk on Mr Dunlop’s face, and when he turned his back on Daddy I wanted to yell at him and at Daddy to go after him. But Daddy just stood there a long time, staring at the piece of paper with his mouth hanging open. Finally he slowly folded it into thirds and marched home with his jaw muscles bulging.
    The next morning Daddy wasn’t in the shop like he usually was. Beau was tugging at his hair with both hands and said Daddy had headed up north along the creek. I had a feeling I knew exactly where: the same place he and Mr Dunlop had that argument.
    I ran up there, and Daddy was standing, hands on his hips, gazing across the creek at the Dunlops’ property. His eyes were all squinty and fixed above the horizon, so I could tell he wasn’t really looking at anything. His jaw was clenching and unclenching, and sometimes he’d flinch, like he was seeing some kind of horror movie in his head.
    I didn’t want to scare him, so I tried to make a lot of noise with my feet and my breath as I walked up beside him. “Daddy, what’s wrong?”
    He didn’t move but kept gazing across the creek towards the Dunlops’ land. “There’s a lot wrong out there, Red.”
    “Well, can I help?”
    It seemed like it took a while for my words to sink in. Slowly he turned to me, eyeing me like he’d been away somewhere. His face crinkled into a smile, but his eyes were still sad. I remember how the red sunrise shone off of them. “Maybe you should, son.” He put a hand on my shoulder and took a deep breath.
    I stood up tall, because I could feel that he was about to say something real important, when we heard a shot and Mr Dunlop’s rebel yell.
    “Take that, you dang coon!”
    Daddy’s jaw tightened, and his face screwed up so he looked like he might be sick. He clutched my shoulder hard and even grabbed his stomach with his other hand. I thought he was going to puke.
    “Are you okay, Daddy?”
    He looked across the creek, his face still all clenched. “Let’s get to the shop. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
    As we walked in silence, I was mad at Mr Dunlop for ruining the moment. I looked at the sign on the shop as we walked in, PORTER’S: WE FIX IT RIGHT , and I wondered if I’d be able to fix whatever Daddy was feeling so sick about. I tried bringing it up a couple of times that day, but the first time Beau walked in and interrupted us, and the second time Daddy didn’t even answer, just looked across to the Dunlops’, clenching his jaw. Soon after that, Daddy was gone.
    Now I’ll never know what it was. And that made me madder than ever at Mr Dunlop. Because it must’ve been serious. Daddy even said should. Maybe you should, son. Not maybe you could or if you want to . He said, Maybe you should .
    I heard a car drive up outside, but it didn’t really register because I was still thinking about Daddy and what I should be doing. When the engine made a last rev before cutting off, I thought about me and Daddy identifying cars by their sounds. By the time the car door shut, I dropped the cans of soup I was stacking because I knew that it was a high-performance car. I ran to the front porch of the What-U-Want and, sure enough, I was right.
    It was a brand-new ’73 red Mustang convertible. I didn’t even know those convertibles were out yet. Sometimes we got lucky and rich folks came for a drive in the country, and we got to see some pretty cool cars. Until now,