BACK Goss lets his message sink in for a moment, then switches tracks. No, the boyfriend is not the baby's father. She's been gone two weeks, and Dale bursts into tears as he tries to explain that no one knows when she's coming home. Goss quickly gets up, walks behind Dale and puts his hands on his shoulders.
Dale looks very small.
Goss presses on Dale's shoulders, as if trying to push all his strength down into the boy. Robert is surprisingly specific about what he wants to be when he grows up. He wants to be a jet mechanic at Luke Air Force Base. For a while, he settled for a weekend job selling boxes of candy with Dale. Robert and Dale met at Azteca and have at least two things in common.