Me and Hiram happened to look at each other in that moment, and I seen his chest rise and fall. I got the chills. The look on his face—a hunger to hope, but a fear to—was one I never seen before in nobody under forty. I didn’t know a child that age could even playact what I seen on that face. Them two boys, it was hard to see how they would turn out all right, all they had going against them.
