J.O.I.'s father's garage monologue (pp. 163–164)
did I tell you what he did? Did I tell you what he did? I was your age Jim here take the flask no give it here, oh. Oh. I was thirteen, and I’d started to play well, seriously, I was twelve or thirteen and playing for years already and he’d never been to watch, he’d never come once to where I was playing, to watch […] Till one day he came, once. Suddenly, once, without precedent or warning, he… came. Ah. Oh. I heard him coming long before he hove into view. He cast a long shadow, Jim.
Context
The onset of the 1933 primal scene, and the tell that marks it as compulsive: the question asked twice in a row by a man who has plainly told it many times, to a captive ten-year-old, mid-flask. Even the age wobbles in the telling — the memory rehearsed so often its edges have gone soft while its core stays razor-sharp.