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won’t.”
    â€œShut the hell up, both of yuns,” my dad yelled. “Jesus Christ, it’s like havin’ a couple of goddamn six-year-olds in the car.”
    I fought back a grin. I was now twice the size of Virgil and the days when he could whip me were long over, and he knew it. Of course, the threat of a good beating never stopped a Hickam from diving into a fight.
    Virgil took a long drag on his cigarette, this time blowing the smoke out the window. “And to think I was going to get you a job on the carnival this summer,” he said. “That ain’t happenin’ now, that’s for damn sure.”
    â€œHe couldn’t go anyways,” Mom interjected. “He’s got football practice starting in July.”
    â€œFootball,” Virgil said, like he had a mouth full of curdled milk. “That don’t put no money in your damn pocket.”
    â€œCoach Battershell said if I keep improving and keep my grades up I might get a scholarship to play in college.”
    â€œYeah, that’ll be the day that you go to college. Barber college, maybe.” Virgil and my dad both laughed aloud. I expected resentment from Virgil as it seemed to be his lot in life to assemble and disassemble Tilt-A-Whirls, but it was hurtful to hear my dad laugh. I don’t think Nick Hickam ever wanted any of his sons to make more of their lives than he had made of his, and he was secretly glad that my brothers were failures. The fact that they had no more education than he had, and one was an inmate and the other a carnie, allowed Dad to maintain his stature within the family.
    We arrived at the reformatory at one-thirty and walked into the large lobby where we had to sign in. Construction on the prison began in 1886 and it looked like a European castle with its ornate architecture and stone walls. Stepping into the building gave me chills as I joined the pathetic lot of human flotsam, black and white, that wandered through the lobby, waiting to be called behind the bars for their visit. Visitation was strictly on the terms of the State of Ohio. The slightest infraction of the state’s rules would keep you from the visitation room. Even the angriest of men, like my dad and brother, understood this and kept their tempers and mouths in check.
    I don’t have much of a memory of Edgel before he went to prison. After he dropped out of high school, he worked odd jobs and was rarely around the house. Edgel and our father had such a tense relationship that I think he found it easier to sleep in his car or at the home of a friend rather than stay at our house. The summer before I entered the sixth grade, I was in the front yard hitting stones with a broom handle when Sheriff McCollough pulled up in his cruiser. He got out of the car before the dust had settled around the tires. He was a big man with shoulders that strained the fabric of his white shirt and hands that could hide a softball. A toothpick was tucked into the corner of his mouth. He nodded and said, “Howdy, buster. Your brother hereabouts?”
    â€œWhich un?”
    â€œEdgel.”
    â€œUh-huh. He’s out back in the shed with my pa.”
    He winked and headed around the house. As soon as he had disappeared beyond the porch, I dropped the broom handle and ran around the other side of the house, creeping up to the back of the old shed with the gambrel roof where I knew there was a gap in the old plank sheeting.
    The sheriff didn’t announce himself but just walked right into the shed and said, “Whoa, would you look at that, an Oldsmobile Rocket 88. Ain’t that somethin’ to behold?” Sheriff McCollough put a massive hand on each fender and leaned down into the hood of the car my dad and Edgel were working on. “Remember that old slogan, Nick? ‘Make a date with a Rocket 88.’ Yes sir, they sure don’t make ’em like this anymore, do they?” Neither my dad nor Edgel responded.