K’s spending the night at mine because this time his pop has beat him real bad. It’s come out that K’s mom had another kid before she ever met him and K’s pop’s furious, been on a helluva bender for days, which only ever leads to one thing.

Fists.

K finds out from his mom that this older brother is living in Carmel outside Indianapolis and says he’s going to steal a car, drive out there. I say I’ll go with him because K’s got that look in his eye that means he might do something dumb. Like that time in the 7-Eleven when he thought they’d short-changed him and he went back later on, tried to burn the place down.

The car K gets is a banger but it has a cassette player and cassettes in the glove compartment. Patti Smith. Lou Reed. The Animals. By the time we get to Carmel we know all the words to House of the Rising Sun, Redondo Beach and the whole of this Velvet Underground album which we play again and again.

The house is white stucco in a line of other white stucco houses but this one has a sign stuck in the lawn, Keep Off My Ass.

Funny, says K, his lips in a line.

The door is opened by this little lady, white hair, wire frame glasses. There’s this dog yapping by her feet. She gives it a kick, tells it to pipe down or it’ll get what for too and then she asks us what we want.

K goes shtum and so it’s yours truly who pipes up. Who K is, who K’s mother is, the whole sorry mess of it.

The little lady doesn’t say anything but gives us this mean look she seems to have under copyright and leads us down a corridor and into a room at the back. Royston, she says, there’s some folk to see you.

And this room is flooded with light. The whole back wall is window looking out into a garden. It’s like Jurassic fucking World out there, plants and creepers and trees and so on and so it takes our eyes some time to take in the bed, the metal cylinder on it, the head sticking out of the end of it.

Royston’s in an iron lung, says the woman. Doctor reckons he’ll be out of it next year. The year after. But what do those doofuses know?

Hey, says Royston and then he does this thing with his eyes, flicking them to the top of K’s head, where K’s baseball cap is. You a baseball fan? Whaddya say, when I’m outta this thing, you take me to see the Red Sox play? Dom DiMaggio put in 11 seasons for the Red Sox. .298 batting average. He was my favourite player. Not playing anymore though.

Do you know who I am? says K. I’m your brother. Your mom and my mom. The samearooney.

And I’m kinda relieved that K led with the brother thing, not what he normally says when he gets comments about his cap.

K is not a baseball fan. Not at all. But he has this fantasy where the whole of the Boston Red Sox suck him off. He’s always telling people. Like a challenge. Like, I’m gay, what you going to do about it asshole.

In fact, this was the line he spun to his pop right after his mom told his pop about the other kid. His pop didn’t know he was gay, not until then.

He was trying to deflect his pop’s fists, he said, away from his mom. The black eyes and bust nose are evidence of that. And his mom didn’t get it so bad in the end.

He’s a good son on the quiet, K. Who knows he’ll be a good brother?

Sure, says K to the brother then giving him this big shit for nothing smile. You want to see the Red Sox I’ll get us a box. Best seats in the fucking stadium. Me and you bro, who’s gunna stop us?