When Mitch had been a toddler and troubled with sleeplessness, Adam used to prepare warm milk for him. Warm milk was one of Mitch’s few pleasant memories from those days.

It was typical of Adam, who was seven years his senior, to act as both mother and father to Mitch, although both parents were living at that time. Their mother spent the hours she wasn’t drinking passed out on the sofa or floor. Their father, Horace Yeager, avoided the house as much as possible.

Horace had hoped that eloping with Myra Granville, the only child of his wealthy employer, would earn him advancement in the company, if not a life of luxury and leisure. Instead, the old man fired him.

Horace then sent his wife in to plead their case-she was informed that her father would not speak to her unless she was no longer living with Horace Yeager. The birth of a grandchild-thought by Mr. Yeager to be a surefire way to soften his father-in-law’s heart-only brought about a notice from an attorney, informing his wife that she would not inherit a penny.

By the time Mitch began school, Horace Yeager was living in another house with another drunken woman in another part of the country. Mitch’s mother told other people Horace was dead. Within a year, this was true-he was killed by an unknown assailant after he had won a large amount of money in a card game. The money was missing.

Not long after their father abandoned the family, a remarkable person appeared at their door. Mitch remembered looking in awe at the long black car that pulled up in front of the house. A liveried chauffeur came to the door and offered to take Adam, Mitch, and their mother “home.” Mitch was six years old. Adam, at thirteen, was less impressed, but no less eager to live at the mansion so often pointed out to him by their father.

Their mother’s response to this olive branch was to reply that the chauffeur could tell her father to go fuck himself. The man’s startled expression indicated that he was more surprised to hear a woman use such language than the boys were, but he said nothing back to her. He pulled a white envelope from his vest, placed it on the kitchen table, and left.

The envelope was embossed with their grandfather’s monogram. His mother stared at it, then said to Adam, “Open it and read it to me. I don’t want to touch the damned thing.”

There was not, as expected, a letter. There was nothing in the envelope but money.

Their mother was more than happy to touch the money. Mitch saw Adam palm five dollars out of it before he handed it to her. Adam used the five dollars to make sure they ate. The rest, their mother spent on booze.

The chauffeur continued to come by once every two weeks, always bringing an envelope. He always handed it directly to Adam. Adam and Mitch, forbidden to mention their grandfather, began referring to him as “the chief” and spent every night before the chauffeur was due worrying that the old man might change his mind about supplying money to boys he did not know and a woman who despised him.

Adam once took a greater share of the cash for their household expenses, and their mother beat the tar out of him for it. Mitch tried to help Adam fight her off, and got a black eye for his trouble.

Adam repaid her by walking to the landlord’s house and tipping him off about the chauffeur’s schedule. The landlord learned to come by the house to demand the rent within minutes after the chauffeur appeared.

Adam contrived in this way to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Mitch gathered scrap wood for the fireplace, the sole source of heat for the house. That winter, it wasn’t enough-Mitch came down with a horrible cough. Fearing pneumonia or tuberculosis, Adam used the five dollars to pay the doctor to come to the house, and to buy the medicine he prescribed for bronchitis.

As he lay recovering, Mitch worried over the burden he had placed on his brother. Somehow Adam still managed to feed them, even if it was an odd assortment of foods that now graced their table. They seemed to have a whole case of tomato soup, and a crate of oranges. To Mitch’s surprise, a week later there were two chickens and a rooster in a pen at the back of the house.

When asked about it, Adam said, “Chickens make eggs. Makes more sense to own chickens than buy eggs, right?”

“But how can we afford them?”

Adam winked and said, “I got Ma to let go of some of the chief’s wampum.”

Mitch always suspected the story of his mother’s generosity was untrue. Adam was leaving the house late at night and not getting back home in time for school. When he arrived just before dawn with a new blanket for Mitch’s bed, Mitch knew Adam had stolen it.

Adam eventually admitted it, and that he had stolen food as well.

“And don’t be mad at me, kid,” he said. “We gotta stay alive, don’t we?”

Despite a few close calls, Adam was able to avoid being caught. All the same, Mitch lived in constant fear that Adam would be sent to jail. He didn’t know what he would do if his big brother wasn’t there to help him.

Over the next three years, Adam’s thievery changed how they lived. It also changed Adam. Mitch saw him become tougher, more sure of himself. Always big for his age, at sixteen he looked as if he were twenty. He led a gang of other boys now, a group Mitch longed to join. “When you’re a little older,” Adam would promise. “But I’m going to need me a guy with an education to help out, and you won’t be getting up for school if you’re out all night with me and my boys.”

“You’re smart,” Mitch said. “And you don’t go to school.”

“There’s different kinds of smart. You stay in school.”

His mother would occasionally sober up enough to complain that she wasn’t going to have a pack of thieves living under her roof. Adam, now taller and stronger than the child she had beaten, no longer hid his contempt for her. He told her that he didn’t want to live with a drunken old whore, either, but they’d have to make do. If she didn’t want to live with a thief under her roof, she could damn well move.

One day she seemed to take him at his word. She told Mitch to pack up his belongings, that they were going to find another place to live. He saw that she already had an old valise half-filled with her own clothing.

“What about Adam?”

“We’re leaving Adam. That’s what.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. I want to stay with Adam.”

She slapped him. “Now, you get in there and pack, or I’ll persuade you in a way you won’t like.”

To her dismay, Adam walked in the door just then. “Persuade him to do what?”

Mitch told him.

Adam looked furious for a moment, then said, “You need a drink to steady your nerves.”

He poured a glass of rye and stood by and watched as she downed it, then poured another. When she hesitated, he pushed the glass closer to her. She began crying, but drank it.

When she had downed three drinks, Adam said, “Mitch, you go into her room and unpack her bag. I’m going to take a walk with Ma and talk things over.”

Two days later, Mitch came home from school to find a policeman talking to Adam on the front porch, and felt certain that his worst fears had come to pass. He wondered if his mother, who had been sulking, had reported her own son to the police. He felt a surge of rage at the thought, rage that allowed him to overcome his dread and approach them.

The policeman’s face was sorrowful, though, and Mitch noticed that Adam seemed solemn as well.

“It’s Ma,” Adam said. “She’s dead.”

“What happened?” Mitch asked, working hard to hide what he felt-a vast relief.

“She was in an accident,” the policeman said gently.

“She was hit by a streetcar,” Adam said. “She tripped and fell right in front of it. Nothing the conductor could do.”

“Were you there?” Mitch asked.

“No,” Adam said, watching him carefully.