“In addition to Linda and me, there's a brother, a strange little guy named Bradley, obsessed with his own cowboy boots. He paces areound and around the house, staring at his feet and humming the G. I. Joe song from the television commmercial. He is the ringleader of a neighborhood gang of tiny boys, four-year olds, who throw dirt and beat each other with sticks all day long. In the evenings he comes to dinner with an imaginnary friend named Charcoal.'Charcoal really needs a bath', my mother says, spooning Spaghettios onto his plate. His hands are perfectly clean right up to the wrists and the center of his face is cleared so we can see what he looks like. The rest of him is dirt.”

“He stared up at me, and even as the house fell apart around us, even as drops of fire rained down from the sky, his hand raised and brushed a lock of hair out of my face, and I felt his stomach rise as he breathed in deeply.“You,” he whispered. “You’re a boy?” His hands cupped my face, and a tear streaked down my cheek onto his fingers. “I dreamt of you but… but I never thought…”

“I screamed. You told me not to.” He rubs at the soot on one hand with his thumb, then stares at it. “The dirt,” he says, his voice strangely peaceful.“What about it?” she asks. “It’s dirty.”

“I lost the letter in rather embarrassing circumstances. We were to dine at Parramatta Government House that same evening, and Peter had come in early from harvesting the wheat, sitting down in all his dirt to read the precious missive. I sat beside him, fresh from my bath. And so handsome did my husband look, long legs sprawled in Dungaree trousers and frowning over my father's spiky hand, that I could not resist reaching out to smooth away the frown. He caught my hand to his lips, still reading, and then chancing to look up, and reading my face more swiftly than he would ever read the written word, pulled me onto his lap.”

“Together they crawled through the attic space, looking for the source of a roof leak they’d discovered in the last bathroom. Jax was out in front,braving the spiderwebs. Maddie was behind him, working really hard at not looking at his butt.And failing spectacularly.So when he unexpectedly twisted around, holding out his hand for the clipboard she was now holding, he caught her staring at him.“I, um—You have a streak of dirt,” she said.“A streak of dirt.”Yes.” She pointed to his left perfectly muscled butt cheek. “There.”He was quiet for a single, stunned beat. She couldn’t blame him, given that they were both covered in dirt from the filthy attic. “Thanks,” he finallysaid. “It’s important to know where the dirt streaks are.”“It is,” she agreed, nodding like a bobble head. “Probably you should stain-stick it right away. I have some in my purse.”“Are you offering to rub it on my ass?”

“Zik spits into the dirt in from of home plate, his own little ritual. He digs in and grits his teeth, snarling at the Heat. Psychology. Baseball's all about psychology.”