The first time I saw John V., he was dressed in a shirt that was dirty, and ragged, and much too small for his six-foot frame. He was walking on the right shoulder of a long stretch of road that led to our rural school. His head was bent, and his shoulders sagged, the way people shrink inside of themselves when they have little reason to live.
He was fifteen.
His family was poor, dirt poor, as they used to say in Oklahoma, and it wasn’t unusual to see him, or one of his siblings, combing through trashcans, looking for food.
Like many poor people, he was treated as an outcast. Almost every person he met ignored him, and the school bullies made a point of embarrassing him.
