A boy meets his father for the first time during the summer of his fourteenth year. When he was ten years old, the boy's mother told him the story of his conception. His father came home one day during a similar summer, had passionless sex with her, and then left with the rumbling of the nearby train. The boy and his mom go to the Watertown Blues Festival every year. This year, the boy's mother dances through the crowd while she drinks beer and listens to the music of Etta James. At one point, the boy's mother takes him by the shoulders and points out a man amongst a group of drunken men in front of a bar. She tells him that he is the boy's father. The boy walks over to the men, but does not talk to them and instead stands at the entrance of the bar. The boy turns to his father and says nothing. The father does not recognize the boy as his son. He compliments his son on his basketball shoes and the son tells him that he is good at basketball. The group of men whom the boy's father is with decides to leave to meet female company, but before he leaves, the father gives the boy his sunglasses.