Walt and I sat on the couch and that’s where he told me.
Danny was eight. Nineteen ninety-nine. A county fair, the stock car races, and Danny went down on the gravel with his hands over his ears, screaming.
“Was a hundred people standing around,” Walt said. He was watching his son through the doorway the whole time he talked. “Maybe more. Fair’s loud, so a lot of ’em didn’t even know why. They just knew there was a big kid on the ground and a man losing his mind trying to pick him up.”
“What did they do?”
“Watched.” He turned his coffee cup a quarter turn on his knee. “Couple of ’em laughed. One fella told me I oughta get a handle on him. A woman with a church shirt on prayed at us. Out loud. Like he was a devil thing.”
He was quiet for a second.
