Fictional Character Development, I

He couldn't keep the needle out of his arm. His teeth were rotten—grainy yellow, the same color as the thrift store shirt he'd stolen. He stood cockeyed from scoliosis. His stepfather used to beat him with a belt until his back bled. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade, ashamed because the boys in the locker room made fun of the welts on his frail body.

He fell in love with Lacy, but she never knew his name. He dreamed of living on a farm with her. She'd tend to their home, and he'd spend his days on a tractor. She would hold him at night, and he could trust her with his scars. But they were only dreams.

His mother loved him, but she despised him for looking like his father. When she got drunk, which was daily, she'd remind him that his deep-set eyes and large knuckles were identical to a father he never knew but was told lived in Ohio.

His little brother, who had a different father, was subject to the beatings too, and he'd wrap himself over his brother when their stepfather took out his belt. He'd take both beatings, so his brother's back didn't look like his.

His favorite ice cream was chocolate mint, though he rarely had it. His favorite show was The Brady Bunch. He dreamed of having a father like Mike Brady—clean-shaven, shirt tucked in, always home. He liked to jump rope, but his stepfather called him a faggot for it, so he gave it up.

He enjoyed listening to his mother's Merle Haggard records, which she played on Sundays when she sat on the porch in a yellow rocking chair. They didn't have neighbors—just a rusty old bus in the woods and a trampoline that had long since rotted away.

A hound dog named Pappy limped around. The boys and the pup occasionally went swimming in a mint-colored stream. The water was cold—cold enough that when he was underwater, he could forget about being forgotten.

One day he came home to see an ambulance in the driveway. His brother had accidentally choked to death. He screamed until his throat bled and bashed his forehead against a tree until he blacked out. His stepfather laid off the beatings for a week. And he aged into a bitter man before turning eighteen.

He tried to join the Army, but his scoliosis disqualified him. He beat his stepfather within an inch of his life, disfiguring his face with his bony knuckles, and spit on him. A judge gave him six years in Blackburn. He served three.

He became a diesel mechanic after his release, falling asleep most nights thinking about Lacy.

Then Pappy died.

He got drunk in a laundromat the next day, crying alone, while "Tecumseh Valley" trickled from speakers in a water-stained ceiling. Then he shot heroin in the parking lot for the first time, with a stranger—hoping to see his brother, and Pappy.