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The four-year-old boy stirs in the backseat of the station wagon, his body little more than a bump beneath the blanket draped over him, his hip sore where the seat belt’s buckle presses into it.

He sits up, rubbing his eyes in the morning light, and looks around, confused.

The car is pulled to the curb, idling beside a chain-link fence. His father grips the steering wheel, his arms shaking. Sweat tracks down the band of flushed skin at the back of his neck.

The boy swallows to wet his parched throat. ‘Where… where’s Momma?’

His father takes a wheezy breath and half turns, a day’s worth of stubble darkening his cheek. ‘She’s not… She can’t… She’s not here.’

Then he bends his head and begins to cry. It is all jerks and gasps, the way someone cries who isn’t used to it.

Beyond the fence, kids run on cracked asphalt and line up for their turn on a rusted set of swings. A sign wired to the chain-link proclaims, IT’S MORNING AGAIN IN AMERICA: RONALD REAGAN FOR PRESIDENT.

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