I knew, in that second, standing on Congress Avenue with a child’s voice still in my ears, that my mother knew exactly who that boy was, and had known before I did, and had known for a length of time that I did not yet have a number for.

And I did not say anything about it.

Not then.

That is worth recording too — my first instinct on that sidewalk, with everything already visible, was to get my mother a chair.

Part Two: What the Song Was

To make sense of any of this I have to go back to the apartment.

Carmen Abreu and I got married in 2009 when I was thirty and she was twenty-eight.

She was a bookkeeper at a hardware supply in San Antonio.

I had a commercial license and eleven years of driving for other people and an idea.

We bought the first truck in May of 2010.