When he was two years old, the boy was dropped off at the donation door at the Salvation Army's secondhand store in Tunica, wearing nothing but a sagging diaper.

A planet of the ape's backpack stuffed with more diapers and some shirts and mismatched socks,

little green army men was dropped on the ground next to him.

Then a hungover woman banged a scabbed fist on the metal door, and a hungover man blew the

car horn, and she ran around and got in as the child watched with a docile expression.

Out of the car window the man called out some sort of farewell to the child that was lost in the off-beat jug of the engine, and then the foul-running

Cadillac rattled out of the gravel parking lot, leaving the child in the dust cloud of abandonment.

The door opened in two women in matching Red Salvation Army T-shirt stared down at the boy.

Then they looked into the parking lot at the still lingering cloud out into the gray morning sky. And they glanced at each other. And then one said, I guess we're going to have to hang a sign next to the one that says no mattresses. It says no youngens. The other woman lifted the boy and held him up beneath his arms as if to make certain

that he was made of actual flesh and bone.

And when she was satisfied, she hugged the child close and rubbed her hand across the back

of his head.

She said, I pity those who have to live behind me in this weary and heartless world.

The police were called and while they waited, the women washed the boy in the bathroom's sink with paper towels and hand soap.

The filthy feet and filthy hands and the diaper was two changes past due.

After they had wiped him clean and filled the trash can with dirty paper towels,

the boy stood naked and fresh on the smooth concrete floor of the bathroom,

and they admired his innocence and beauty.

He was then dressed in a new diaper and a Spider-Man shirt taken from the rack in the kids' section.

The boy did not cry, did not talk, but instead sat satisfied between the women on a tweed

sofa marked $15 as if he had already decided that this was his new home and that he was better off.

He was better off, but this was the new home and that he was better off.

...