The Shelter of Home

Joe Kovac: Before the tics spurred him to gnaw holes in his polo shirts, and long before the spasms conspired to make his fingers jab his eye sockets until they bruised black, and years before a neurologic lightning bolt snapped his neck, a little boy used to slip next door to his landlord's house for breakfast.

Most mornings he'd show up in his He-Man pajamas and ask for toast.

The landlord was a cop. He made the best toast, fried in a pan, in butter. What the boy would not like so much came later when he realized the man, in his early 50s, was sweet on his mama.