I was thirteen years old the day my father threw my duffel bag into the dirt and told me to walk home.It was August, and it was hot enough that the vinyl seat of his truck burned through my shorts. We\u2019d been driving for about forty minutes without a word between us. That wasn\u2019t unusual. My dad didn\u2019t talk much. He used silence instead, and he expected you to work out what the silence meant. If you got it wrong, that was your problem.He turned off the highway onto a dirt road I\u2019d never seen before. Gravel popped under the tires. Fields on both sides. Fence posts. No houses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was thirteen years old the day my father threw my duffel bag into the dirt and told me to walk home.It was August, and it was… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n