Hillbilly Elegy

one of my second-grade football games,
a tall, overweight mother muttered about
why I had been given the ball on the
previous play. Mom, a bleacher row
behind the woman, overheard the
comment and told her that I’d been given
the ball because, unlike her child, I
wasn’t a fat piece of shit who’d been
raised by a fat piece-of-shit mother. By
the time I observed the commotion on the
sidelines, Bob was ripping Mom away
with the woman’s hair still clenched in
her hands. After the game, I asked Mom
what happened, and she replied only,
“No one criticizes my boy.” I beamed
with pride.
In Preble County, with Mamaw and