{"content":[{"text":"better get ready to lose his money. Dad kinda laughed it off, quiet, and said we’d just have to see \n how it went.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.092559,"width":0.7573969999999999,"height":0.035718}},{"text":"Bennie was a real dick about it. Actually got in Dad’s face about some other money he owed, \n and my pops tried to calmly assure him he’d get it, especially if the Broncos didn’t make so \n many turnovers, and Silva got all red in the face and started yelling that he’d better pay win or \n lose, or else get used to pissing through a stump. And then he slapped him.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.138013,"width":0.7606919999999999,"height":0.073598}},{"text":"Slapped my dad, right in the middle of the potato chip aisle.","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.221347,"width":0.469929,"height":0.01677899999999999}},{"text":"“You’ll get your money, Ben,” my dad said, red as a beet. “I promise.”","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.247862,"width":0.5532159999999999,"height":0.016779000000000016}},{"text":"So, every teenage boy struggles with his father on some level or another, but seeing another \n man do that was like… I dunno. Like being forced to eat a piece of my own death. It wasn’t \n necessary. It was just Bennie Silva.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.274377,"width":0.7479019999999998,"height":0.054657999999999984}},{"text":"I was a weird kid, tall and skinny and glum, and seeing my dad struck like a battered child in \n front of everyone—and nobody doing anything, least of all my dad, or me—it put my moody \n quiet brooding side into overdrive.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.338771,"width":0.7574160000000001,"height":0.054657999999999984}},{"text":"I never talked my shit out with anyone, I just walked. Walked around the woods by day. \n Walked around the streets in the evenings. Walked by the river at night. Real late, too. My \n parents couldn’t control me, they both slept like rocks and had early morning jobs to go to, so I \n could slip out without any real sneaking. Maybe they knew, maybe not.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.403165,"width":0.7456610000000001,"height":0.07359699999999997}},{"text":"So that Friday, real late, I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to toss and turn, so I got up in the \n dark and slipped on my shoes and jacket—a Broncos windbreaker, of course—and I went to do \n some outside moping.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.486498,"width":0.7473609999999999,"height":0.054657999999999984}},{"text":"A lot of things fell into line just so.","bbox":{"left":0.147059,"top":0.550892,"width":0.273956,"height":0.01677899999999999}},{"text":"There was this bar by the river. Not right up on it, but with a weedy overgrown patch \n between its parking lot and the waterfront. Every three or four years, that grassy stretch would \n flood completely, so nobody was going to bother building on it, they just put up one of those \n metal fenders between the grass and the cars, so no drunk would accidentally try to park in the \n water. There was a little trail along the bank where I’d do my nocturnal perambulations or \n whatever, and I was on that when I saw Bennie Silva stumble out the back of the bar. It was him, \n for sure. He stopped under one of the lights, taking two tries to get the zipper on his windbreaker \n started. He was shitfaced. I was no sophisticate at 17, but even I could tell, he was stumbling. He \n bumbled his way over to his car and was leaning on it, muttering swear words, trying to get it \n unlocked, and there was a cinderblock right by my feet.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.577407,"width":0.759593,"height":0.187234}},{"text":"He didn’t see me, he was plastered and trying to outsmart his car keys. I picked up the \n cinderblock and my head went to a really weird space, you know? I felt like, if I paused even one \n second to think things through, I’d get paralyzed, and then I’d do something stupid and he’d hear \n me or feel me somehow, and everything would get hectic. So I very carefully didn’t think, I \n slipped my brain into neutral because I could see how things could play out if I got out of my \n own way a little and let events roll downhill.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.774377,"width":0.762766,"height":0.11147600000000002}},{"text":"�2","bbox":{"left":0.495098,"top":0.928417,"width":0.00980399999999998,"height":0.01677899999999999}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}