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double-checking.”
    The boys laughed.
    “Must you always provoke me?” Mama asked. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but you’re like a stone around my neck!”
    “I’m just saying,” I said.
    I glanced over at Bill to see if he was picking up on the fact that Mama and I couldn’t stand each other.
    But of course he wasn’t.

8) The swimming hole
     
    T HE BOYS changed into their swimming trunks and I walked with them through Mama’s massive backyard, heading for the swimming hole in the bend of the river.
    Funny how you can never be too intrinsically disordered when other people want you to babysit their kids.
    “Noah’s going to hell,” Eli announced.
    He was twelve and knew everything.
    “Who said that?” I asked.
    “Mrs. Parson.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “She’s our Bible study teacher. She says Catholics are going to hell.”
    “Hell is other people,” I said.
    “Catholics worship Mary,” he said knowledgeably.
    “Do they?”
    “That’s what Mrs. Parson says.”
    “Good for her,” I said.
    “Who’s Mary?” Josh asked. He was ten and much brighter, I thought, than his brother. Or, at least, he was calmer and not so quick to offer blustery Baptist nonsense.
    “She’s the mother of God,” I said.
    “Jesus’s mother,” Eli said. “She got pregnant with the Holy Spirit. She’s the Whore of Babylon, though.”
    I rolled my eyes.
    At the swimming hole, the boys laid their towels on the grass and barged in. I stripped down to my underwear and waded after them.
    The water wasn’t that deep. The swimming hole had seemed huge when I was child and Bill and I went skinny-dipping here. Now it was no more than a small bend in the river with a nice sandbar to sit on.
    “Which of you little shits should I drown first?” I asked, advancing on them.
    They laughed. I grabbed Eli, hefted his scrawny ass into the air, and tossed him into the deeper water. Josh shrieked with glee and tried to flee, but he was next. Noah was not spared. We played serious dunk for a while, laughing and roughhousing, and it wasn’t long before they learned they had to work together if they wanted to dunk me.
    I looked back at the riverbank, saw that Shelly had wandered down from the house and was no doubt “supervising.” Everyone knows that gay men can’t wait to get their hands on helpless prepubescent boys.
    While I was distracted, they piled on top of me and dunked me right and proper.
    “You’re worse than the kids,” Shelly observed when I finally waded ashore.
    The way she glanced at Noah seemed to indicate that she had nothing but pity for him, stuck with such a half-assed father as he was, bereft of the multifarious benefits that stem from self-righteous, uptight heterosexual parenting.
    I dried off with my shirt.
    “It’s hot, ain’t it?” I said to her.
    “You ain’t kidding.”
    “You might feel better if you cooled off,” I suggested.
    “I ain’t swimming in there!”
    “I didn’t say anything about swimming, sister-in-law.”
    “Wiley Cantrell, you keep your hands off me!”
    Being the intrinsically disordered person that I am, I, of course, could not do that. I dragged her from the shade of the tree and pushed her pretty ass into the water, spiffy clothes and all.
    The kids screamed with delight.

9) My name is Juan
     
    O NE OF my first customers the next day was a shy Hispanic man with the most amazing brown eyes. Soulful, like a deer, wide, open, trusting, yet filled with a strange caution. He was dressed simply in a T-shirt and shorts, had beads around his neck like the kind you get when you go down to the Gulf Coast and swim in the ocean. His elfin features were a pleasing brown. Soft curls of black hair were a riot on his head, hanging in his eyes, climbing down over his ears, which poked out of them disobediently.
    “How ya doing?” I asked.
    He didn’t answer.
    “Do you bring your FoodWorld card?” I asked.
    He lifted his eyes to me in confusion and shrugged.
    It was a look I knew