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me and smiled sheepishly.
    Five years before I was born, Pvt. William R. Giller waded through the gray mud of the Mekong Delta—8,500 miles, the atlas says, from Nebraska—trying to flush Communist insurgents in cone-shaped hats and indigo pyjamas out from villages of supposedly democratically inclined farmers who also wore cone-shaped hats and indigo pyjamas. Discharged back to Knudsen, NE, Dad pushed a broom in the flour mill until I came along, when Aggregate Grains of Pawnee County burnt to the ground in ten minutes and he subsisted on the disability payments he received for his smoke-damaged lungs.
    The Knudsen Lutheran church proposed building swank baseball diamonds so we could host county-wide tournaments—simple, right? But Dad, in his sweated-through golf shirt, stapled fliers to telephone poles, declaring out-of-towners bring in unwanted elements . This might’ve been a hard-won lesson from the swampy Mekong, but every kid just thought he was a jackass. Out-of-towners, like from Lewiston and Pawnee City? Knudsen couldn’t join the little league without diamonds, so we couldn’t even pretend there was such a thing as a baseball scholarship unless we had a parent who’d drive us up to Burchard—and who had a parent like that?
    â€œWe could make our own league,” we said. “The Shit-hole League.”
    The Lutherans got too busy arguing about Dad to get the diamonds built.
    â€œYou could look right at them,” he told me, teetering on the edge of my bed, “and never know what they really were.”
    Keister the dog had been backed over by then. As I got older I was able to fight back more effectively on the living room floor, and Dad seemed to like that even better. His expanding gut stayed hard as a rock.
    In twelfth grade, Mom started taking me into Lincoln on Saturdays, showing me art galleries and even a play. She hadn’t turned chubby like other guy’s moms, and her legs got looks.
    â€œI don’t care if you even get married ,” she said in the middle of the sunken gardens, solid hands on my shoulders, “but I want to teach grandkids to canter. I see buck-toothed girls on palominos. Leave ’em with me, then go to Europe if you want.”
    â€œBut I don’t want a buck-toothed wife,” I said.
    â€œThere are worse things,” she whispered, retying her chiffon scarf over her head.
    I told Dad I was making hunting knives at Buck’s apartment but instead pimply Buck and I were studying like maniacs for scholarship exams. “Giller,” he’d whisper whenever I dozed off. “Your mom’s totally Alanis Morissette.”
    And after midnight I was calling modestly toothed Lydia in MacArthur while we simultaneously filled out applications to the same dozen schools.
    Then from my eventual dorm at UC Denver I’d call Mom when I knew Dad would still be asleep—not to worry, I won’t be talking about the guy much longer—and one morning she told me that after fifteen years his lungs had somehow recovered so the doctor had said he was no longer eligible for disability. They went to Pawnee City where Dad started as an apprentice millwright. So, yeah, once I was long gone they actually moved away from Knudsen.
    The Pawnee Republican of November 18, 1996:
    A 41-year-old Pawnee City man, formerly of Knudsen, was killed when he was ejected from a 1991 Buick Skylark that flipped multiple times before colliding with the Sit-Stay Dog Food warehouse on the northeast corner of Broadway and Sheridan.
    State police reported William R. Giller was pronounced dead at the scene by Pawnee County coroner following the 10:45 p.m. crash. One witness reports the Skylark traveling in excess of 90 miles an hour as it turned south off Western. Giller, the sole occupant of the car, was not wearing a seatbelt.
    Pawnee City fire and ambulance personnel assisted at the scene. An investigation into the crash is continuing.
    Even at