For her, love had always been about holding on too tight. She could never get the grip just right. When sleep finally came, her body shook with fresh dreams of her son hungry and helpless in a Ganton alley. Her nightgown, damp with sweat, clung to her skin like Saran wrap.

Five

Midnight

Midnight lay facedown on the back seat of Daddy’s Chevy Silverado pickup truck. The truck smelled worse than the dead frog from science class that had been soaking in formaldehyde for weeks. This was not Midnight’s day to spend with Daddy—usually that was Mondays and Fridays—but he jumped into his father’s truck whenever he spotted it around town.

He listened to the rumble of the wind and the purr of the engine, trying to ignore the anger in the voice of the man yelling at Daddy. Fights seemed to find Daddy and his friends. Their bodies ready to give a punch or get one. Midnight had seen so much in his time that Granny called him an old soul. Even without sitting up to look, he knew the voice of the other man belonged to Drew, the guy who let Daddy live in his place after the plant closed. Midnight would’ve moved in, too, but Granny said it didn’t look right for a boy his age to live with two men. So he was stuck at her house.

From inside the truck, he could hear Drew saying, “You owe me rent money, Butch. You better get it to me by the end of the week.”

Then Daddy: “I told you I’d pay you. Get off my back.”

Midnight didn’t sit up to look, but he could hear their grunts and the slapping of fists against jaws. With his eyes shut, he felt each bump and bang on the side of the truck, not sure if Daddy or Drew was winning, but sure he had time. A few minutes at least.

All the truck windows were white with snow. On all fours, he crawled to the center console, opened it, and pulled out the plastic clips that led to the secret compartment where Daddy kept the gun. Well, not a real gun, because Daddy hid those underground. The feds won’t get these, he said. The gun he’d bought for Midnight looked real except it had an orange tip on the end and shot plastic pellets. Daddy was trying to teach him how to shoot. But the only time Daddy let him fire it was when he wore special clothes and something to protect his eyes.

“Don’t be scared of it. Hold it like you mean it,” Daddy said the first time he took him out for practice shooting.

That day, Midnight had extended his good arm—the left one—wrapped his fingers around the trigger, closed his eyes, and then lost his grip, the gun falling to the ground.

“Pick it up and do it again without being so reckless.”

He let Daddy’s words in his ear guide him. Square your shoulders and lean forward. Don’t pull the trigger, squeeze it like you’re making a fist. On Midnight’s fifth try, Daddy dropped his head and was quiet at first, his eyes misting. Then he worked his mouth into a half smile, slapped Midnight on the back, and said, “Good job. That’s my boy.”

Midnight would always be a one-arm shot. The boy with the gimp arm. Forever damaged goods, and he feared no matter how brave he was, Daddy would only see his scars.

There was no one in all of Ganton as fearless as Daddy, who called himself a good guy with a gun. He’d whipped it out once at the laundromat to stop a man he swore he saw choking his girlfriend and slamming her head against the washing machine. Both the guy and the girl said they were just goofing around, but Daddy didn’t believe them.

And there was that time somebody was breaking into cars late at night in one area of Pratt, and Daddy patrolled the street with his hand on the Sig in his waistband, the same nine-millimeter that cops and Navy SEALs carried.

Now Midnight practiced his shooting position, aiming the gun at the steering wheel, the floor mats, the power locks, then the passenger window. Tucking his elbow in close to his rib cage, he made himself smaller. Then he lined the muzzle of the gun up with the side of the front seat, using it as cover the way he would if he were a cop trying to sneak up on a bad guy. But then the stomp of boots in the snow outside the driver’s-side door got louder and Midnight quickly tossed the gun back in its hiding spot and shut the console. Even though it was a pretend gun, Daddy didn’t like him playing with it unsupervised. Midnight hunched down on the floor of the back seat.

The door to the truck opened and Daddy got in and revved the engine long and hard. The truck charged ahead, making Midnight bump his head on the back of Daddy’s seat. He let out a yelp.

“Patrick, what the hell are you doing in my truck?”

That’s how he knew Daddy was mad. Usually, he called him kid or nothing at all, rarely his real name. Daddy and Granny and the teachers at school were the only ones who called him Patrick. The name didn’t feel right for him. After all, Patricks had a certain look, like Patrick Mulligan in his sixth-grade class. Red hair combed neatly, freckles all over his face, and navy-blue pullover sweaters. That’s what a Patrick looked like.

Daddy didn’t like the nickname Midnight, and he hated where it came from. In third grade, Midnight had started noticing Black boys who made the coolest shapes with their hair and somehow it stayed in place and never fell in their eyes. Boys who casually dropped the g on words sometimes, like when they told him to quit buggin’ when he said something silly. They walked with that cool limp, the dip that had a rhythm to it like music always on beat. One time he followed them into class imitating their walk until their teacher, Mrs. Thornton, made him stand in the corner, calling what he’d done inappropriate. She never explained why he was being punished, but he’d learned early on that grown-ups didn’t have to explain themselves to kids.