The truth is all of the front teeth are held together in an elaborate array of metal spikes and wires. A few in the back are missing too, and an odd assortment of rods and screws hold together flesh and bone.

Up by the bridge of the nose are two deep scars and the countless broken bones now ache and scream for rest.

I feel the need to apologize to the boy on the lake’s shore, pole in hand, coffee can full of worms. This was never the plan. The plan was to fly in space.

Somehow, between that day when they drained the lake and Dougie and me waded out in the waist-deep muck and caught the six-pound bass, and exhausted from the wars of being eight years old we laid down in the cattail reeds, and tried to figure out the sun; between that day and today, this life happened. Boyhood was lost.