Gately in the Trauma Wing (pp. 813–814)
I crept downstairs from my sick bed and stole over a hundred dollars from a shoebox marked I.B.E.W. LOCAL 517 PETTY SLUSH in the back of my father’s den’s closet.
Context
Tiny Ewell, at Gately's hospital bedside, confesses the third-grade theft that he thinks "may have informed my whole life": raiding his own father's union slush box to pay off the bullies he'd been robbing to fund. The dyad twist is in the amends he can never make — "My father lost the I.B.E.W. account under the Weld administration and has been dead since 1993." The son's buried crime against the father outlives the father, leaving a debt with no one left to repay; the Ninth Step runs into a grave.