Sometimes a child can grow up untainted by sights and sounds that brushed against him in attempts to paint him this color or that. A streak of blue that shows up forever on Friday nights. Or flashes of red that come out when someone reaches for his girlfriend.

Joseph's colors were a rainbow dipped in turpentine and set out to dry. His life was of family and home, paying bills, finding time, keeping timbers and wires unbroken and fixing them when he couldn't. Same thing at his job. He felt his colors sucked into red by a devil he once saw as a boy. He stood in oil-slicked colors that melted from him into a muddy pool at his feet.

All Devin's colors were born black.