The Throwaway Son

To Dale and Julia, he had always been Boss, who, with his wife Addie, had been their best friend. They had never known him to be anything other than a kind, generous, hard-working man, endlessly cheerful and a joy to be with. At the end of his life, Boss calls his friend to his side to unburden his soul. Dale listens as the story of Boss s early life unfolds, revealing him to have been born an abused, unwanted child who did whatever it took to survive in a hardscrabble mining town in West Virginia. As he grew, he embarked on a career as a grifter, getting by on his good looks and silver tongue. The abused child became in turn an abusive man who neglected and abandoned his own family the same way he had been. Nothing good had ever happened to Boss until he met Addie, whose love had finally turned his life around to become the man Dale thought he knew. Boss had spent most of his life trying to get his mother to love him. How different would his life have been if only she had not thrown him away?