The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn

Author:Patricia Finn [Finn, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2026-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Emmett did not go to real jail again until he shot the horse, at which point he went to the Collins Bay Penitentiary, where he served two years less a day. He was arrested regularly before then, though, mostly for drunken brawls or driving drunk up the highway, sometimes alone and sometimes with Stafford sitting next to him, silent and afraid, until Michael and Mary-Jean put a stop to Emmett driving Stafford anywhere. But on each of these occasions, Emmett was only held overnight by the local police, who released him quietly into his father’s care the next morning. Michael Hopkins was respected and pitied by too many members of the local community to subject him to further anguish.

By the time Stafford started high school, he was familiar with the pattern of living with a family drunk. A couple of good days meant a bad one was coming, and hangover days were the best days to have a friend over. All public events were preceded by dread and followed by shame. Normal was a word for other people, and there was no value in explaining the secrets of family life to outsiders. Pretense was everything. If you didn’t talk about it, it wouldn’t hurt as much.

And there were worse things than a brother who drank. Worse things in the world that lay outside the perimeters of your own farmyard. If you felt the fear rising in your throat on the nights when a brother didn’t come home and a father with a bad heart stood alone outside, smoking cigarette after cigarette, waiting for the sound of a truck in the distance, you would learn, as Stafford did, that it was safer to think about the misfortunes of others than your own. Stafford’s mother was a master at this, and in the summer of 1959, an event took place that gave her all the protection she needed.

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