"We had eight men in a gang," my father recalls.

The only thing missing, his father recalled, was any sense of feeling.

"He told us to take care of ourselves," his father recalled.

The father recalled that his son, in response, asked quality-of-life questions.

"It was the poorest farming country I ever seen," the father recalled.

"Todd never talked about leaving school until a week ago," his father recalled.

"He and I, you could cut the tension with a knife," his father recalled.

"I thought telling the truth was the only way out," the father recalled.

"When it came time, I couldn't find a good place for him," the father recalls.

And the brother or the father, she couldn't recall which, who'd sung him back into his human body.