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Years ago in the early 1990s, Willy T. Ribbs, the first Black man to compete in the Indianapolis 500, sought a deep-pocketed partner, a heavy breather, as he calls them, to help catapult him into the victory lane.

Temperature moderated, my attention then wandered to the sounds of a heavy breather two rows in front of me, and later to the squeaks emanating from the heating pipes.

He's a heavy breather, he snuffles like a piglet and he's an incorrigible face-licker.

“Is he the best that’s left? I’m sorry, but I’m not putting my future in the hands of this heavy breather.”

The prospect of a reunion gives the novel its zing; it’s hard to shed a tear for Charles, “a heavy breather, a snorer, a guffawer,” as well as a defiantly lazy father and an unfaithful jerk.