Back at the table of dreams the smaller children chattered with laughter. I was pleased with their animated health. The rose colored vitality exuded from their round cheeks and hearty smiles. Across the table, though, the eldest gazed sternly upon me. At once he began to speak.

“Daddy, what’s going on?” she screamed over the top of Dink Fretwell’s squealing white walls. Tom Harris lowered the Mossberg to the ground and looked past Tristan to her mother who stood smoking a Winston in the doorway.

“Damn, D, what happened to your face?” Keith said. He’d just observed Darryl’s swollen cheek, eye of black and the way his lip’s left side pressed against the swollen skin like a balloon about to pop.