But I love the I, steel I-beam that my father sold. They poured the pig iron into the mold, and it fed out slowly, a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened, Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he marketed it, and bought bourbon, and...
Eventually my stepfather grew tired of his exile in the basement and left. She wept and begged him not to go but he packed his Hummingbird guitar and soldering irons and moved in with a woman he’d met at the corner store. And my mother took...