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the base of a tree, it keeps chewing off pieces of you until it takes you down.
     
     
    * * *
Two days later I'm sitting in the minivan, parked on Flushing Avenue outside the Bushwick Houses—that's the housing project where the Bitch lived. Nicky didn't come outside that day, but I wasn't worried—you can't keep a kid like Little Nicky inside for long, he'll drive you out of your mind. Sure enough, the next day he came outside, he was chasing leaves around the dogshit-speckled patch of grass between the buildings. I slid back the side door of the van and sat in the opening watching him. When he finally noticed me he came tearing over, screaming, "Poppy!" Nobody noticed, nobody was watching, nobody gave a fuck. After a few minutes he detached himself from my leg and looked up. "Poppy," he said. "You got a haircut."
     
     
I had been wearing dreads for a while, but after the job with Rosey I'd gotten them chopped off, and now my hair was not much more than a painted shadow on my skull. "Yeah, I did. How you feeling? You doing okay?"
     
     
He looked down at the sidewalk and shrugged. Didn't want to talk about it.
     
     
"You wanna come with me?"
     
     
He looked up, eyes wide. "To stay?"
     
     
"Yeah."
     
     
He looked around. "Mrs. Hicks is gonna get mad."
     
     
"She'll get over it. Come on, let's go."
     
     
    * * *
We made it as far as Haverhill, Massachusetts, that night. I still don't know anything about Haverhill, it was just one of those places on the way to where I was going. We got out on that wide, flat, endless American interstate, it got dark and I got tired, I saw the sign that said Haverhill, and I got off. Nicky and I slept in the same motel bed that night. He was scared and he cried, I comforted him the best I could. It was tough for me to understand his tears. They couldn't have been for his mother, he didn't really remember her, nor could they have been for Mrs. Hicks, God forbid. Me, I had plenty to cry about, and I did it, too. New York City was lost to me now. She had cast me out, left me in these strange backwoods, I thought she was closed to me forever, this beautiful hideous bitch goddess whore mother of a city had turned her back on me and left me out here with Opie and Dorothy, River City before Harold Hill, Jesus, who wouldn't cry?
     
     
Little Nicky got over it and fell asleep tucked up next to me, his arm stretched out onto my stomach. Every time I moved he would grab and hang on, and that really said it all.
     
     
    * * *
That sense of urgency left me sometime during the night, and in the morning we lay in bed while Nicky watched Barney on the motel television. I wondered, for a while, what Barney was doing to my son's head, but it was something he knew. He watched, rapt, sang along with the idiotic songs in his little boy's voice. He even tried to explain to me, distractedly, what the hell they were singing about. I should have done this long ago, I thought, I should have come for him as soon as I got out. We shut the television off when Barney was over, and Nicky stood on a chair in the bathroom, brushed his teeth with my toothbrush, washed his face. I watched him, wondering how in the world I was going to do this. What could I teach him? I didn't know anything myself. Nothing good, anyway.
     
     
There was a huge shopping mall on the other side of the highway from the motel, and there was a pancake house in one corner of the parking lot. I've never been a breakfast guy myself, I always thought the only civilized time for breakfast was about two in the afternoon, preferably with a few Bloody Marys up front. Nicky was bouncing in the front seat beside me. He didn't say anything, but little kids gotta eat, even I knew that. I pulled into the parking lot next to the pancake house and shut the car off. He got nervous when I opened my car door.
     
     
"Where you going, Poppy?"
     
     
I pointed at the pancake house. "Me and you are gonna go have breakfast in there."
     
     
"Breakfast?"