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wrenching trade-offs:
each year he becomes more interesting as a person, but less hers alone.
    Jimmy beams since he knows the gifts are next. He grabs for
a box and rips into the wrapping paper. Alison and Emily return together to the
kitchen to divide the cake.
    Emily asks, “What did you get Jimmy? Hank said it was really
special.”
    “We told Jimmy for his birthday he could pick where we would
go on our family vacation.”
    “Great idea.”
    “I figured, you know, Disneyland, Universal Studios.”
    “And?”
    “And he picked a ragged outback fishing camp in the middle
of Lake Superior.”
    “Let me guess, no room service.” Emily grins.
    “No indoor plumbing.”
    “So Hank and Jimmy are going without you?”
    “No. All for one.”
    “Well, at least you’ll get some fresh air.”
    “Fresh air gives me hives.”
    “Didn’t you go to camp as a kid?”
    “I went to camp one time. I got a staph infection from a
mosquito bite and my dad had me airlifted out.”
    “Well, aren’t you Dora the Explorer. I’m kinda sorry I’m
going to miss this adventure.”
    “There will be nothing to see as far as I’m concerned. I
bought two eight-hundred-page novels and enough bug repellent to maintain a
defensible perimeter.” They each grab cake plates and head back into the dining
room to distribute the cake.
    Alison hands a plate to Jill who recoils and asks, “Is that
Red Dye Number Two in the icing?”
    Aunt Beth retorts, “Could someone please get the duct tape,
Jill’s ruining dinner again.”
    Jimmy pulls a two-foot remote controlled robot out of the
box. He’s ecstatic! Everyone watches. He presses the controls and the robot
scurries around the room with bells ringing and lights flashing.
    “Cool! Really cool! Thanks, Uncle Wes.”
    Uncle Wes beams, “Cool. You see! I always get the best
gifts.” He turns to Hank, “Remember when I got you that hockey stick?”
    “Uncle Wes, that was 1979.”
    “See! You remember.”
    Jimmy’s robot is followed by a new Xbox game, a skateboard,
from his Aunt Emily and Grandma Carolyn. And from Aunt Jill two bottles of
extra strength sunblock and a documentary titled Food, Inc .
    While the Kraft family celebrates Jimmy’s birthday, Ben
Burne’s family also celebrates. They, too, have a birthday today.
    * * *

Chapter Five
    Gravel Burne walks down the narrow windowless hallway toward
his mother’s kitchen. His feet are flat and heavy. He is a gristly
fifty-year-old with wiry arms and legs, and a mess of cheap hair plugs that
look like clumps of dead grass. Long on anger, short on thought, he is the
authority around his two other brothers while Ben is in the pen.
    Small table lamps, with yellowed onionskin shades, shed the
only light in this dreary apartment. City buildings rise up tall on all four
sides blocking out the sun’s natural light and turning the room a bitter color.
The windows don’t open so the air instead is stale and smells of mold and
Bengay. The paint peels on the door moldings. The furniture resembles its
owners: dysfunctional and warped.
    In the kitchen, Theo Burne empties the jar of Ragu into the
pot on the stove. Theo is an overly muscular, mildly retarded, mute man who
follows his brothers like a puppy and has been trained well by them. Kent
Burne, who is a year younger than Gravel, sits at the small table complaining
to his mother.
    “Most the trouble with women is they got no sense of humor,
except for you, Mother.” Sitting across from him, the wisp of an old lady grins
exposing a gaping black toothless hole. Kent continues, “I was at the Lenny’s
BBQ with a prime piece-a-ass I picked up at the Walmart, and I let out this
earth rockin’ fart, and the bitch don’t even crack a grin. Instead, she looks
at me like her shit don’t stink.”
    Gravel enters, “You might have more luck if you stop dating
girls with hair on their back.”
    “Great. Advice from a guy who owes a fortune to 976-U-CUM.”
    A muffled grunting noise comes