Hillbilly Elegy

never accepted anything from me—not
money from my paycheck at Dillman’s;
not a share of my boot camp earnings.
But she accepted my three hundred a
month, and that’s how I knew she was
desperate.
I didn’t make a lot of money myself
—probably a thousand dollars a month
after taxes, though the Marines gave me
a place to stay and food to eat, so that
money went far. I also made extra money
playing online poker. Poker was in my
blood—I’d played with pennies and
dimes with Papaw and my great-uncles
as far back as I could remember—and
the online poker craze at the time made it
basically free money. I played ten hours