Archive of Our Own ^beta

Flatness. Nothing but perfect flat horizon for miles.

Nothing to keep me from leaving. It’s sad, I thought, like, pathetic sad, scanning around for something – anything – that I might miss when I was long gone.

But there was just flatness. Some corn. Typical Nebraska.

So I got on the bus, put on my phones, and jacked up The Stooges until Iggy Pop’s trademark growl made my glasses vibrate.

Good riddance.

In less than a week I’d be nineteen, with a new job, a new home, a new life. The hangover I had now wouldn’t matter. None of this would matter.

I didn’t seriously consider, as the bus pulled away from the setting sun, that a decade would pass before I saw this place again.

* * *

It’s Byers’ fault I have to go back there; Byers answered the phone. I keep telling him to get rid of the thing. If people really want to get in touch with us, they can either e-mail us or just come right on over – assuming they know where we live. And generally if someone wants to get in
touch with us at all, they know where we live. We don’t have too many accidental visitors.

I hate the phone.

But Byers tells me this guy’s been trying to get in touch with me for a few days. He’s been leaving messages, saying that he’s trying my old number in DC but some Spanish woman is answering the phone and doesn’t know who I am.

Christ. I haven’t lived there in ages – since I first came out to the East Coast. That takes me back. But not back far enough. I still have to deal with Byers, who is holding a phone
in my face and urging me to get on and talk to the person on the other end. I grab it and shoo him away.

“Yeah?” I say into the receiver.

The voice on the other end is tentative, not trusting
it’s me. “Richard?”

I swallow, my chest suddenly tight. “Ellroy?”

It all crashes back, too quickly. Ellroy. Ellroy. Fuck.
Ellroy. It could have been JFK Himself calling to say he faked the whole assassination and was alive and well eating cherry pie with Elvis in the Bermuda Triangle, and I would be less surprised.

Byers runs back into the room to see what’s up. Must have heard the shock in my voice. I stamp my foot, wave him away again.

No, not shock. Fear.

The were only two reasons Ellroy would call, would ever even go through the trouble of tracking me down – a man I haven’t seen or spoken to in ten years; and when we did speak last,
it wasn’t on the best of terms. I’m not sure I can deal with either one of those reasons. So I do the only thing I can think of. I hang up the phone. With a soft click, Ellroy is gone.

Breathe, Langly, breathe. Inhale. Exhale –

And I back away from the phone like a wild animal, never losing eye contact, until I can reach my windbreaker. I throw it on and unlock the door. I don’t even notice until I try zipping it up against the cold that I put the jacket on inside out. I think that’s when I start running.

* * *

I never wanted to be a farmer, mostly because I knew pretty early on that I’d never be happy living on a farm.

I had this specific epiphany when I was six years old. Right around Halloween. I remember it was Halloween, because I was so excited about my Lambchop costume that I wore it everywhere around the house. My father’s response to this was a droning complaint that the costume was expensive and it would be my own damn fault if I ruined it.

What did I care? I was six. I just wanted to be Lambchop.

So, the night before Halloween, in my costume, buzzing around my mother’s feet. I was practicing the Trick-or-Treat routine, probably for the thousandth time. We didn’t do the
door-to-door thing – houses in Saltville were miles too far apart – but the local middle school and high school hosted parties. And they were always well-appointed with adults, who were always well-appointed with bags of delicious candy.

“What happens after I say trick or treat?”

“They’ll give you a piece of candy, and you thank them.” she said flatly. For the thousandth time. “You know this already, Richie.”

My father walked into the kitchen, covered in dirt. He was always covered in dirt. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and gave me a hard stare. “I told you to take that damn costume off.”

I hung closer to my mother, whined, “But what if they don’t give me any candy? What do I do?”

My father sighed loudly. “This is what you’re teaching him? How to beg for candy?”

“It’s Halloween,” my mother countered. She should’ve kept quiet.

My father glared at her, lips thin, until she lowered her head and looked at the table. The he grabbed me by the wrist and growled, “Come here. It’s high time I taught you something.”

He dragged me outside, behind the main house. We stopped in front of the chicken coop. I was crying. I thought I was being punished, but didn’t know what for.

“Pick one,” he said.

I sniffled, and said nothing. My teeth were chattering too hard to speak, anyway. It was chilly – not white-knuckled, freeze-your-ass-off cold the way Nebraska could get in the winter – but it was dark out and I was only wearing a thin, cheap cotton Lampchop costume. No jacket. Not even shoes – except whatever attached booties came with the costume.

“Pick one,” he repeated, shoving me closer to the wire fence.

I really didn’t know what to do, so I went stiff. It was animal reflex: Stay perfectly still, and don’t make a sound, and the predator will lose interest.

Unfortunately, he didn’t lose interest. He grabbed the nearest chicken by the neck, and stretched it across a rotting tree stump. “If you’re old enough to be begging other people for food, you’re old enough to kill your own.”

If I’d been older/stronger/smarter/braver, I would have righteously argued that I wasn’t begging; I was trick-or-treating, like every other kid in the world. And I certainly wasn’t asking other people for chicken; I was hoping for candy.

But I wasn’t, and I couldn’t, so I didn’t. Story of my life.

My father absently rubbed the edge of a small ax with his thumb, checking the blade. “This’s how life works, Richard. You kill what you eat. This’s how the animals stay alive.” When he deemed the ax usable, he pointed to a spot just below the beak. “Here. Hit it here.”

I took the ax with my thumb and forefinger, like a dirty sock. It was heavier than it looked, rooting me to the ground. I couldn’t move. I just stared at the chicken, futiley struggling in my father’s grip. Finally he just shouted, “Now!”

Again, reflex: I squeezed my eyes shut, raised the ax, and brought it down with a wet thump. The sound of the other chickens was deafening. I kept my eyes closed so tight I saw stars, until I heard my father mutter, “Good one, Richie,” and walk back to the house.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was my beautiful Halloween costume – completely ruined, clotted with dirt and feathers and chicken blood and bits of hay. Mud seeped right through to my bare skin.

The second thing I saw was a disembodied chicken head, still lazily dripping a pool of blood on the tree stump. I gagged and threw up, totally sealing the fate of my Lambchop suit.

I didn’t go trick-or-treating that year.

I call this memory: Why I Hated Growing Up on Farm, Volume One.

* * *
I end up at this little park near the creek, sitting on a swing. I don’t notice the sound of our microbus pulling up. I don’t hear Frohike get out and walk toward me until he’s close enough to touch my shoulder.

“I knew you’d be here,” he says.

Sure. I’m predictable; I’ve always had spots. For the past few years, this has been my spot. This little park, with its swing set, and view of the water, and intricate wrought iron gate that the Parks Department locks after sundown. I have no trouble picking the lock, a helpful skill I picked
up during my misspent youth.

“You follow me?” I ask. Don’t wanna get into the heavy stuff, which I know is coming, just yet. My legs spill onto the pavement – who builds a swing set over concrete? – and I give myself a small push.

“I followed you the first few times you came here. I stopped when I realized you weren’t going anywhere interesting.”

Typical Frohike. He probably had whole rolls of film that tracked my progress along the streets from our place to this park. I want to snap back at him with some retort – something about he’d need the van to keep up with me on those legs of his. But I don’t have the energy. Hearing
Ellroy’s voice sucked it all away.

“Langly,” he pauses. I can see he’s struggling with what he has to tell me. He switches to personal mode, “Richard, that man called back right after you left –”

“Did he say something about my mother?” I try to keep my voice flat. I push myself a little harder. The imaginary shrink analyzes and says, Stop trying to escape, boy. You can never swing that high.

Frohike squinches his eyebrows, shakes his head. He starts to speak, but I already know what he’s going to say.

“My father’s sick. Or dying. Or dead.” Eeny meeny meiny mo.

“Call this guy back, Langly. He didn’t give me details. He just said he needs you to come home.”

I dig my feet into the ground, stop the swing. I try to say, “Oh man, how melodramatic can you get?” But my voice catches and my vision goes all soggy, and I’m glad my hair is all over my face from the swinging so Frohike can’t see me trying not to cry.

* * *

My father was not an easily pleased man. He enjoyed a few, select things: Productive cows, things that grew when he planted them, finding inaccuracies in the Farmer’s Almanac, Old Thompson whisky, and classic western movies.

Whenever the local station would air a John Ford film he would plant himself on his arm chair in front of our ancient Zenith. He could recite the words to most of those films by heart. His favorites, by far, were the John Ford/ John Wayne westerns. I think he watched re-runs of the entire Cavalry Trilogy at least once a month for as long as I could remember. Alcoholics
are nothing if not obsessive.

My mother and I would usually steer clear of the living room when he was watching his movies. I would sometimes watch him from the doorway – the back of his chair silhouetted by the dull glow of the television, his left arm dangling over the edge of the chair holding a bottle, his right hand dangling over the other side holding a glass. When the glass dropped, or when the credits rolled – whichever came first – that was my mother’s cue to drag him to bed. Usually he didn’t put up much of a struggle; usually he’d passed out.

But before I figured out that it was better to leave him alone with his larger-than-life heroes, I would sit in there with him, on the floor. My head swung between him and the TV, watching as his lips absently moved in perfect tandem with the voices on the screen.

It was one of those old films, Fort Apache or The Long Voyage Home or something, that started it –

No. I remember. It was Stagecoach.

He stopped reciting lines and called out, “Ringo! Ringo, c’mere boy!”

I jumped – not at the sudden holler, but at the words themselves. Ringo was the name of my father’s beloved Shetland. But Ringo had died a week ago, a fact which my father had clearly forgotten. So I felt the need to remind him.

I said, evenly, “Ringo’s dead.”

But he didn’t hear me. “Ringo, c’mere boy! Come see who y’re named after!”

“Ringo died, dad. We buried him in the yard last weekend.”

“What the hell’re you on about? That’s one of the finest dogs anyone could hope for. An’ he’s named after one of the finest men, see, right there on the screen. John Wayne, best damn man I ever saw, the Ringo Kid himself.”

But Ringo wasn’t coming. After a few more futile calls, my father got this glazed look in his eyes, and I knew he remembered. He sniffed and mumbled, “Oh yeah. Oh yeah, we buried’m in the yard last weekend. One of the finest dogs . . .”

His arm shot out, but I moved too late. He yanked me up to his eye level and said, like he had no other choice, “You’ll have t’be the Ringo Kid now.”

I tried to squirm away, but his long fingers gripped me like a vise. “What’s your name?” he asked, slowly, like he was talking to a kid. And I was a kid – I was about eight at the time – but even then my dad usually talked to me like the high school dropouts he employed on the
farm.

“Richard,” I said, voice quavering. Wrong answer.

His grip tightened. “What’s. Your. Name?”

“Ringo,” I squeaked. Obediently, like a dog. Like I was his stupid dog.

“Good boy,” he grinned, and released me. I fled the room. That was the last time I watched TV with him. When I woke up the next morning there were finger-shaped bruises on
my arm where he’d grabbed me. I heard his voice wafting up from the kitchen.

“Hey. Ringo. Come eat your breakfast, boy.” Clear emphasis on the name. I shuddered. I was hoping he’d forget the whole thing – it wasn’t uncommon for him to do something when he was drunk and then completely forget it when he sobered up. But I could practically hear the shit-eating grin on his face.

Damn. Damn damn damn damn damndamndamndamndamndamndamn –

For the next ten years or so until I left, my father reserved use of the name Ringo for when he wanted to tease me or order me around. He treated it like some big, pathetic joke that I could never fill John Wayne’s boots, the only man he ever openly respected. I think he especially enjoyed calling me that in public areas, where other people could hear the nickname and adopt it for their own use. Saltville is a small town, surrounded by even smaller towns – way before the Information Superhighway, gossip traveled faster than the speed of light. It seemed like within a week, everyone in a fifty-mile radius was calling me Ringo.

And it just got worse as I grew into the antithesis of everything my father loved about John Wayne: Gawky tall, layering three or four shirts to hide the fact that you could pretty clearly see my ribcage. I had long ago given up trying to find a subtle pair of glasses – my face and hair were about the same shade of Casper the Friendly Ghost, and any frames I wore stood out like a spotlight. Now, kids are going out of their way to look like this – geek chic, whatever. But in Nebraska in the late seventies/early eighties I stood out like a giant sore thumb. And suddenly I was a giant sore thumb seemingly named after the ugly Beatle.

I tried to fight it, but after a while I just gave up. It was hopeless. I would forever be Richard ‘Ringo’ Langly, my father’s replacement sheep dog.

Thanks dad. That really helped me blend.

* * *

I pack quickly; there’s no reason to take your time with jeans and tee-shirts. I leave a long and detailed note for Frohike and Byers, taped to my main computer screen, explaining exactly what they should and should not do with her while I am away. I organize rough drafts of
the stories I’m working on for the next issue and stack them next to my keyboards with another note full of editing suggestions. I debate about locking my room when I leave, and decide to leave it unlocked. I figure it’ll be a rare gesture of trust – plus, I know both of them could get in
if they really wanted to. I turn off my alarm clock. I clear out my half of the pantry shelves of anything that looks like it’s about to go rancid.

I realize I have no idea how long I’ll be gone.

I’m stuffing a Nation of Ulysses tee into my bag when Byers walks in. He hovers in the doorway for a while, not sure whether to come or go. He tends not to go anywhere unless
he’s specifically invited.

“Come in already,” I tell him.

Byers steps out of the doorway, but he doesn’t come much closer. “I’m sorry about your father.”

“Yeah.”

“If my father was dying –”

“Byers, you hate your father. He’s a right wing supremacist bastard and stands for everything we’re trying to fight – your words.”

He lowers his eyes; he can’t argue with that. “How come you never talk about him?”

“Because I hate him.” The words slip out before I can stop them, and the symmetry is so painfully absurd I start laughing. Byers doesn’t join in, but me must think it’s good for me or something because he just lets me get it out of my system. When I stop, the room goes somber – Byers’ territory.

“Will you be all right?”

I nod, let him play mother hen.

“You’ll call if you need anything?”

I glance at my shoddily packed duffel bags. “Well, now that you mention it, I need something now.”

He looks at me, expectantly. This is harder than I thought. “I need a suit. I don’t think my stuff is appropriate – I mean, I have nothing to wear if – if – ”

“Langly,” he says; but all I hear is stop being such a baby. “I think I can manage to lend you a suit.”

I smile, briefly, grateful that he understood what I was trying to say without me having to say it.

* * *

My mother’s family lived a few miles south of us – which, in farm country, meant my parents grew up as neighbors. They started dating in high school, went to the prom together,
got engaged and quickly married, moved into the guest room that was, at the time, my grandfather’s farm, blah, blah, blah, happily-ever-after.

Whatever.

I don’t think my mom ever got used to leaving the comfort and security of her childhood home. Or else she was fundamentally unhappy living with my dad. She would find excuses to go back
to her parents’ place, where she could sleep in her old bedroom, which looked pretty much the way it was when she started dating my dad. I think she just liked the feeling, in that brief second when she woke up surrounded by all those familiar things from her girlhood. For that one
second she could really believe she was a little girl again, without all the crap in her life.

It didn’t take long to figure out that these little escapes from reality were directly proportional to my father’s consumption of Old Thompson.

She used to take me with her when I was little. I would curl up in bed with her – it was a small bed, a young girl’s bed. I liked going with her, because I preferred her parents to my father’s. I felt like I belonged with her family, the way we all looked alike. My mother and I stood out at Langly gatherings, the only Danes in a sea of dark Welshmen.

When I was too big to fit on the bed with her, she stopped taking me. One of the only times I remember wishing I was short – she never let me get that close to her again.

Now, what I think is: She knew what she was going to do, years before it actually happened. And in her twisted logic, she thought it would be easier on me if she had been a bad mother; if I didn’t need her, or love her, or want her around anyway.

And then I just think I think too much and I’m grasping for straws.

After a while she started staying there longer and longer – whole weekends instead of single nights, then weeks instead of weekends, then almost whole months at a time. No one was surprised when finally she just didn’t come home at all. Except me.

She’d been MIA for few days. I didn’t pay much attention – she’d been gone for longer than that before. I figured she was at my grandparents’. I figured maybe she wasn’t feeling well and was staying inside, staying scarce.

I figured she’d be home soon enough and I could stop eating my dad’s burnt grilled cheese sandwiches and doing her half of the chores. No need to think twice, or notice the hard
resignation that had taken hold of my dad’s eyes, or regret the fact that I never said good bye to her when she left –

Until I caught my father packing her clothes in a cardboard box.

I must have made some noise as I bolted down the hall, because my dad started chasing after me, calling my name. But I was already on my bike, racing down to my grandparents’ farm. I
didn’t bother knocking, just ran up the stairs and went straight to her room. It was empty. The bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in in nights. I staggered against the doorway, heaving, trying to catch my breath. I couldn’t process what was happening.

My grandmother must have heard me. She came upstairs and walked into her room, saw me staring at the perfectly tucked sheets.

“She’s gone, Richard,” my grandmother said.

“Yeah.” I folded my arms across my chest, hunched my shoulders inward. My mother used to say that it looked like I was pulling a cape around myself, trying to disappear. I stood like that a lot. Still do.

“She told me to tell you she loved you.”

“Yeah.” My pulse raced.

“She said she didn’t want me to tell you where she was going.”

“Did she say,” I had to struggle to catch my breath. “Did she say when she was coming back?”

Silence.

Oh, I get it. She isn’t coming back.

“You look so thin, Richard. Why don’t I make you something to eat, and we can talk.”

“No, I gotta – I gotta – go,” I shoved past her and ran down the stairs and jumped back on my bike and started peddling.

If there was any twisted logic to our relationship, it totally backfired. I wasn’t happy she was gone because she’d been a bad mother and I’d be better of without her. I just thought she left because I was a worthless son – not strong enough to protect her from my dad, not special
enough to justify her union with him at all.

I peddled as far away as I could before my legs went numb and I came to a skidding stop and curled up on the grass and stared sideways at the horizon – and all I could think about were the grass stains I just got on my clothing and how my mother was the only one who could ever wash them out. And now she was gone.

* * *

Byers’ suit fits me well enough. A tiny bit short around the wrists and ankles, but still light-years better than my version of formal wear – wrinkled plaid button-down, faded khakis, and a tie that doesn’t go with anything. Even that’s a stretch.

It’s weird to see myself dressed . . . well, nicely. I look in Byers’ mirror and think, if I cut my hair, got contacts, I might actually pass for a nine-to-fiver. And then I have to remind myself that I’m comfortable in my grungy clothes; they’re who I am. And Byers only wears suits all the time because it’s his way of clinging to the normalcy his life had when he was still a narc. So, forgetting outward appearance, I think I win the Well-Balanced Wardrobe Award hands down.

But he’s a true and loyal friend, so I don’t care. I gratefully take his suit and try not to wrinkle it in
the back of the van. After giving me free reign over his wardrobe, a totally bizarre experience – the man has everything, and I mean everything, neatly labeled and catalogued – Byers offers to drive me to Reagan National. I accept so quickly I almost feel guilty.

I stare through the windshield at the lead grey sky. It’s probably going to rain, and I steel myself for a few extra hours of waiting in uncomfortable airport chairs before my flight takes off. I pull my hair back in a ponytail and roll down the window, and let the muggy breeze hit my face.

“How long do you think you’ll be there?” Byers asks. He’s been quiet most of the drive.

“Wish I knew.” I take my glasses off and close my eyes against the wind.

“When’s the last time you were home?” He doesn’t look at me when he talks. He focuses diligently on the road. Our fearless leader.

“I haven’t been back since I left.”

“When was that?”

“About ten years ago.” Actually, I knew exactly how long it had been. I figured it out last night, more insomniac than usual, tossing and turning until me and my sheets were balled up on the floor: Ten years, two months, a week and four days – five days if you count the leap year – six
hours, and roughly fifteen minutes, Eastern Standard Time.

Silence.

“What you said before about my father,” he begins slowly. “You’re right. I completely disagree with what he believes in and what he does for a living. I think he’s made a lot of wrong decisions in his life, and many people were hurt because of those decisions. But I would never want to see him in pain. I would never want him to die.”

He turns to look at me, and I look down at my lap. Wipe my lenses with my tee-shirt. Study the play of skin over bone on the back of my hand. Anything to not look at him and deal with what he’s saying.

“I believe that people deserve what they get, in the interest of justice. But I also like to believe that there’s the possibility of forgiveness and redemption. Second chances.”

He tries to make eye contact, but I look away from his face and stare out at the sky again. “What do you think, Langly?”

Damn. I can’t avoid a direct question. “Sure. I believe in second chances. It’s when you get to the two-hundred-and-fifty-second chance, my heart just ain’t in it any more.” I think of all the times my father hurt me – yelled at me, hit me, ignored me. And how sometimes he’d get really gentle and apologetic afterwards and buy me ice cream or take me to an electronics store and it
would be really nice to be with him.

Yeah. Until the next time he hurt me.

It got to the point where the apologies were more painful than whatever he was apologizing for. Because I couldn’t trust them. They were all broken promises, or second chances, or whatever Byers wants to call them. Forgiveness and redemption my ass – even forgiveness and redemption wither and die after a while. At least when my dad was being a bastard, he was an honest bastard. You knew where you stood.

He considers this. “Well, you’re going all the way home for a reason. I hope, for your sake, it’s a good one.”

Oh man, Byers really knows how to screw with my head.

When I answer, the words are angrier than I intend, “I just need to see what it’s like when I get there, okay? So lay off already.”

“Whatever you say.” He turns back to the road, but I can tell by his tone of voice that he felt he made his point; he got a reaction out of me. I swear I almost see a smile – a sad one, but a smile nonetheless – slowly creep across his lips.

* * *

I used to play this game with myself – who else? – where I would go to this little hill behind the tool shed. I would lie on my back, my head facing downhill, and take off my glasses and stare at the horizon line until the sky and the ground bled together and I couldn’t tell them apart anymore. I could watch the whole sunset this way.

I’d stay there until my father would yell at me to come in for supper. I could usually tell by how said my name, how he slurred the R, whether he’d been drinking. After a while, I could ballpark how much he’d been drinking. By around my fourteenth birthday, I could pinpoint it to the ounce and alcohol content by volume, within 10%.

What a skill. At least I knew when it was better not to come in for supper.

I had a pretty good spread going on in the tool shed anyway – that’s where I kept most of Ellroy’s presents, tightly under lock and key. That, and my tape player, and my ever-increasing collection of bootlegs. The music I listened to depended on the mood my father was in – and
thus, the mood I was in: If he was feeling nasty, I’d blast Minor Threat or The Stooges, and try to lose myself in the volume. If he’d had a good day, I’d sit back and listen to Bowie – pre-Serious Moonlight, of course – or Lou Reed or something. Something mellow.

I would plug in my soldering iron – a present from Ellroy for splicing together some wires in an heirloom lamp – and while I waited for the iron to heat up I’d close my eyes, and imagine I was in New York, seeing all these bands live. Just thinking about their energy, just hearing it on my crappy speakers made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

It didn’t even have to be New York – just anywhere but Saltville. Anywhere that didn’t have so many damn chickens and cows and nothing else. Why did everything I love seem so far away?

Lousy Nebraska. Square state hell. Middle of nowhere – literally. Saltville has the distinction of being almost exactly midway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, almost exactly 1,733 miles in either direction before you hit salt water. Talk about land-locked!

One of the only things that made living there bearable was the two mile bike ride from my house to Ellroy’s Electronics. It was probably the most enjoyable twenty minutes of my day. I made sure to go there as often as I could.

Ellroy’s was always cool. I mean that both ways – I mean, he always kept the place at a constant 65 degrees so the equipment would be happy. And he was always cool to me. He was also one of the only people I ever saw my mother befriend. She used to drive me down to Ellroy’s and they’d let me explore while she leaned against the counter and chatted with him.
When I was older, I escaped there by myself as much as I could. After a while, he’d just keep a box of spare parts for me always lying around in the back room – most of the stuff he’d give me for free. He didn’t have any kids, and I think he liked the idea of someone looking up to him,
following in his footsteps. He taught me basic electronics repair and maintenance – basically, everything I know about that stuff now evolved from those lessons in Ellroy’s workroom. And I was prodigious. When I got better than him, he created a token price: He’d trade goods for services. A broken television, busted clock-radio eternally set to 11:45, toasters that refused to heat up, cassette players that spit out tape, VCRs that recorded when you hit play and played when you hit record, whatever – I’d fix them all, good as new, and Ellroy’d sell them for a modest profit. And in return I’d get a pile of junk.

Well, junk to most people. Not to me.

Random gears, screws, cables, wires, sockets, circuitry, plastic housings, switches. Sometimes he’d give me used tools. He gave me my first computer – an old Apple 2. Ellroy allegedly bought it off some chump for an absurdly low price and said if I could fix it, it was mine; and I did. So he gave it to me as a Christmas present that year. I think I was twelve or thirteen at the time. Pretty young.

I remember not knowing what a chump was, and Ellroy sitting me down in his back office, trying to explain it.

“A chump’s a sucker. Someone so deadened by society that it’s easy to pull the wool over his eyes.”

I must have looked blank, because he just smiled at me and said, “You’ll understand one day, Ringo.”

I suddenly became very interested in cleaning a smudge off my glasses, so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact as I mumbled, “Don’t call me that.”

“But your dad always calls you – ”

I bristled. My dad called me a lot of things that I’d rather not have other people repeat to my face. But instead all I said was, “It’s not my name.”

“Sure, Richard. Whatever you say, kid.”

And that was that. Ellroy smiled again, and started babbling about some new shipment of radios and cassette players he was getting in the next week. I tried to be excited with him – and I was. I needed a new tape player, too. But mostly all I could think about what how I hated being called Ringo and how I really wished I understood what a chump was.

* * *

On a plane, somewhere over Ohio, trying to stay calm. I’ve been on a steady diet of seltzer and Dramamine for the past several hours.

The last time I made this trip, in reverse, I couldn’t afford to fly. It took me six days to get from Saltville to DC by Greyhound, including a few nights’ sleep on benches in bus stations, with varying degrees of seediness.

I turned nineteen on one of those benches.

Anyway, it didn’tmatter how long it took; it wasn’t about me going anywhere.It was about me running away from someplace. As long as there was at least one state between me and Nebraska, I felt free to take my time.

Things haven’t changed that much; I still can’t afford to fly. But I can’t afford to wait six days either. So I hacked myself a seat on this flight – Byers looming over me, making sure I didn’t boot anyone off the plane in my favor, or give myself anything higher than coach. I argued that
coach wasn’t designed for people over five feet tall, and Byers’ diplomatic compromise was for me to get a first-row seat.”

“Great,” I’d said. “I can toss my cookies, be cramped and uncomfortable, and surrounded by screaming babies, all in one trip.”

Byers just raised his eyebrows; The Byers Ethics Look.

Coach it is.

And I know the queasy feeling in my stomach isn’t from the plane. It’s nerves. From whatever’s going to happen when I land. What the hell am I going to say? What do I say to a man I haven’t seen in ten years – a man who dislocated both of my arms, at different times, from yanking me around too hard? A man who begrudgingly learned to cook something other than grilled cheese after my mom left, so I could eat normal food? A man who I disappointed horribly by not wanting to follow in his footsteps? A man who –

Shit. It’s simple and impossible: What do I say to my father?

I wrote my dad a postcard after I left Nebraska, which I never sent, but kept it folded up in my wallet for years and years:

Dear Dad,
Sometimes I get so angry at you I can’t even feel it.
But I don’t hate you, and I hope you don’t hate me.
Love,
Ringo

I think that pretty much sums it up.
* * *

My parents argued a lot when I was young. I mean, when they weren’t totally avoiding each other. It was weird – I know my mom had pretty valid reasons to be afraid of my dad. But the weird thing is that I think he was scared of her, too. Of her fragility, how easily hurt she was.
She was the only person who could make him feel guilty.

The walls in our house were thin. I could hear them arguing at night, their voices chasing each other around the rooms on the bottom floor. A rhythm developed over the years: They’d start fighting in the bedroom over something petty and when it escalated to all-out war, she’d storm into the kitchen. He’d follow her into the kitchen, and after a few rounds of shouting and throwing dishes, she’d run to the living room. He’d chase her into the living room, and there’d be a another few rounds. Things would break, furniture would get knocked over. If it escalated to the point of brutality, she’d lock herself in the downstairs bathroom and leave him pounding on solid wood until both of them ran out of energy.

The house got a lot quieter after she left.

Anyway, this dance would last about an hour. It was a three act structure, with a variety of climaxes, and generally ended up with her spending the night at my grandparents’.

I trace back my love of numbers to these arguments. Numbers; mathematics, coding, binary, even hacking – I’ve heard people wax poetic about the beautiful simplicity of these things. But what I liked about them was their reliability. A three, for example, was always a three. It had a specific value that never changed, and followed a rigid set of laws that dictated how it would react to an infinite number of variables, which also never changed.

I loved numbers because I could trust them: They never let me down, they didn’t require milking or plucking, and I could interpret and manipulate them easily.

So while my parents danced the two-fisted tango downstairs, I would jam my fingers in my ears and count, loudly. Loudly enough to drown out their voices:

“ – hate you, you bully! You threaten, you bully everyone around –”

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven –

“ – what do you do? You sit around, all day, staring into space, you lazy –”

– fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three –

“ – down? I don’t want him to hear this. He hears enough – ”

– twenty-six twenty-seven twenty-eight twenty-nine thirty thirty-one thirty-two thirty-three thirty-four –

“ – bring this on yourself, I’m sorry, but if you’d stop being so damn foolheaded I wouldn’t –”

– thirty-seven thirty-eight thirty-nine forty the square of forty is six-point-three-two-four-five-five-five-uh- three-something-something forty times forty is sixteen-hundred divided by six is two hundred-sixty-six-point-six-six-six-six-six-so-on and two-hundred-and-sixty-six cubed is eighteen-million-eight-hundred-and-twenty-one-thousand-ninety-six plus one is seven seven fourteen twenty-one thirty-five forty-two forty-nine fifty-six sixty-three seventy sevety-seven eighty-four ninety-one nighty-eight ninety-nine one-hundred the square root of one-hundred is
ten ten minus ten is zero anything multiplied by zero is zero one plus one is two two plus two is four four plus four is –

I could trust numbers.

* * *

Ever have one of those days where you feel out of sync with the world? Like you’re walking down a street, and you can’t maneuver through the crowds of people because everywhere you step there’s someone in your way? And you get so pissed off at everyone’s inefficiency that
you just want to punch them all?

I feel like that almost all the time. Maybe that’s why I’ve never had a significant Significant Other. Maybe that’s why I never smile.

Or maybe it’s because I once saw a picture of myself smiling, and it scared me – because I get these creases in my cheeks that used to be dimples when I was a kid but now they’re like craters, and my nostrils flare out which makes my nose look even more beakish than usual. And I’m a frightening guy to look at, without that extra help.

I wonder what my dad would think of Frohike and Byers. Would he disapprove of them, the way Byers’ dad hates us? He’d think they were an improvement if he knew some of the other people I used to hang out with. I wonder if Frohike’s dad was still alive, what he would think of us. I bet he’d approve; I’ve heard Frohike talk about his old man and he seemed really decent – loving, and easy to love.

Why can’t all parents be that way? Because. Families are complicated things.

Damn, there’s a lot of corn in Nebraska. Corn and billboards. And cows. Can’t forget the cows.

It’s a long drive. Four hours. It’ll probably be more, because I take it slow and steady. The Nebraska Highway Patrol can be real bastards – especially to people with long hair and out of state IDs. Even the guy at the rent-a-car booth gave me a suspicious look, and I almost kicked myself for never bothering to renew my Nebraska license, for wearing my Fugazi: Song Number
One Is Not a Fuck You Song shirt, and for not combing my hair before or after I got on the plane.

But it’s scary how quickly the accent creeps back in. Not that it was ever completely gone.

On the good side, I did remember to bring my MY SON IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT ST. JOHN’S ELEMENTARY, and I HEART AMERICA bumper stickers. Truly a must-have for any paranoid venturing into the Great American Heartland. Helps you blend – especially when you’re stupid enough to wear clothing with cuss-words in bold, black letters. If Frohike were here, he’d be one big I-told-you-so.

This is what I think about as I drive home from the airport.Home. Okay. It’s strange and inaccurate to use that word, in relation to where I’m going. Technically, it’s not my home. I never lived there. I’ve never even seen it before – it’s the house my dad moved in to, after selling the farm. He moved there after I left.

Nebraska seems hillier, like it developed some character in the past ten years. My palms are all sweaty. I keep wiping them on my jeans; it’s hard to grip the steering wheel.

Slow and steady. Don’t swerve. With my arrest record, a moving violation will send me straight to prison.

I’m starting to panic. I really wish Frohike and Byers were here. I don’t know if I can do this alone.

* * *

The first time I met Frohike was at some seedy bar in southeast DC in 1987, a dive hacker hangout called Big Brothers.

We were there exchanging trade secrets, or something ridiculous like that. He had his small group of cohorts, smugly labeled The Frohike Electronics Corporation. I was still pretty green, sitting on the stool next to my then-boss Smithee – a friend of Ellroy’s. He was even seedier than the bar, but my biggest problem with him was that Ellroy had made the mistake, when introducing us, of calling me Ringo. And Smithee couldn’t get enough of that. Like my father, he thought it was a big joke. I had to hold myself back from punching him squarely in the kisser every time the name dripped from his greasy lips. But every time I felt like punching him, I also felt guilty about my temper, and then I would have to wonder what else I’d inherited from my father, besides my height.

So Smithee basically managed to make me feel suicidal on a pretty regular basis. Man, it felt sweet when I hacked him out of business within that next year.

I was just off the bus, or whatever the phrase was, working like a slave for this moron’s bootleg cable and software enterprise. He paid me next to nothing, but he did manage to arrange a tiny rent-free apartment until I could afford my own place. I didn’t question the origins of the apartment but I’m sure they were quite illegal.

Smithee and Frohike talked their shit, and after business was over Frohike pulled up in the stool
next to me and bought me a drink. He pushed his wire-rims back and looked me up and down, not caring about subtlety. I knew what he saw: Some tall, skinny kid, trying to look tougher than he was, decked out in hacker-grunge – black glasses, black Alice Cooper tee, black hooded sweatshirt, black jeans, black Converse. My hair was in that awkward stage of growing out, and I had it pulled back in a rubber-band. He probably thought my pasty complexion came from endless hours of sitting inside, staring at a computer screen or tinkering withelectronic equipment. He was part right – I did spend hours sitting in front of computer screens. The pastiness, however, was simple genetics.

But all he said, when he was done appraising me, was, “How old are you?” Straight to the point. “I’ve been trying to figure it out all night.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Goldilocks.” The drinks came. He passed me my beer. “I’ve seen your work. It’s good. What are you, 24, 25?”

“Nineteen.”

He almost choked on his Heineken. “Nineteen? Nineteen, man. You’re a goddamn baby. Smithee!” he called down the counter. “You’re violating child labor laws here.”

I think Smithee answered, “Fuck you,” but it was hard to hear over Frohike’s laughter.

“What’s your name, kid? Doesn’t he call you Lennon or Ringo or something?”

“My name’s Langly.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t you people ever have first names?”

“It’s Richard,” I said, after a beat. I was surprised he asked.

He stuck out his hand. He wore fingerless gloves, even then – for all I know, they’re the same pair he has now.
“Well, Richard Langly, I’m Melvin Frohike. But if you call me anything other than Frohike I’ll have to kill you, and you better believe I know 58 different ways to kill a man without leaving evidence.”

I grinned. He seemed cool. Genuine – that was hard to come by among the people I was hanging out with at the time. For the next several minutes we drank in silence. Then he turned to me and said, all serious, “Look, kid, I don’t know what you’re doing working for guys like
that when you should be at home, with your parents, playing Chutes and Ladders, or smoking dope, or whatever teenagers do. I’m sure it’s an interesting story.”

He paused, sipped his beer. He looked like a guy with his own interesting stories. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you to be careful?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“That accent . . . where are you from, anyway? The Dakotas?”

He was close. I blushed, and mumbled, “Nebraska.”

He whistled. “Nebraska. Sheesh. Well in that case, be really careful, farmboy.”

I saw Smithee get up like he was about to leave. He motioned for me to join him. “I gotta go gawk at some tall buildings,” I said, exaggerating my Plains drawl. “Hey, thanks for the beer, man.”

“Don’t forget what I said.” He touched my elbow when I got up to leave. A casual gesture, just trying to get my attention; but I tensed and pulled back.

“About the 58 different ways you can kill a man without leaving evidence?” I said, trying to keep it light, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

He glanced over at Smithee, who was getting impatient and giving me the evil eye. “No, kid. Be careful.”

I realized, walking home, that this guy Frohike had called me every name under the sun – Goldilocks,farmboy, kid – but he never once called me Ringo. It was nice. I had a pleasant buzz from the beer hebought me. For the first time in a while, I didn’t go straight to my bed and wallow in self-pity.

Okay, sure, we’re at each others’ throats most of the time now that we work and live together. Hell, wewere at each others’ throats back then, too. But it was all in the name of healthy competition and harmlessjabbing. Nothing serious. What he said to me in the bar was more fatherly than anything my real father ever said to me. Since meeting him that first time, I would
see him around DC every now and then. He always treated me to a beer, and made sure to rag on my age, or hair, or clothing.

To this day, I consider Frohike the first real friend I ever made.

* * *

No one answers when I knock. I press against the door, and it opens with a yielding creak. Good old Nebraska. It feels weird – after so many years of quadruple padlocked doors, monitored entrances, secret passwords – to walk into a place with so little effort.

But it’s not really that easy. I almost have to force myself to walk, to put one foot in front of the other.

The house is small and dirty. Not messy, like our warehouse. Just . . . dirty. I mean, our place is littered with crap, but it’s a pretty spotless chaos; dirt and mildew screw up the equipment and we can’t afford to get anything fixed, so we just keep it clean.

But everything here looks like it’s varnished in grime. The kind that doesn’t scrub away without a fight.

I don’t want to look at anything, so I stare at my feet and follow the logical flow of the house. Standard low-income tract housing. We’ve done B&E jobs on types like this before – always in the name of truth, justice, and the American way. Of course.

My father’s room is in the back; I don’t know what I expect when I open his door. For some reason, this image pops into my head from a D&D campaign that opened with, “You have never been here before, but somehow you know where you are going. You walk into a room, filled with the sound of water running down cold stone. The room is dark, but just enough moonlight spills through the narrow windows for you to see that the figure lying in the bed in front of you is no longer in this world.”

Not quite. But what I wouldn’t give for this to be just a part of some roleplaying game that I could stop whenever I wanted.

I hover in the doorway. The room is practically barren. A musty pool of sunlight seeps through blinds. It smells tainted, like fermenting hay. There’s only a bed, pushed up against one of the walls, and a chair, a garbage can.

I blink. Something’s wrong: The bed is empty.

“Richard.”

I don’t even have to turn around. “Ellroy. Where is he?”

“Elgin East. We had to take him there last night, after . . .” Ellroy sounds like he doesn’t want to go into detail. “The doctors tried some last ditch injections, and he’s been stable for about six hours, but . . .” he trails off again. Good; more details I don’t want to hear.

“Your hair got long,” he finally says.

“It’s been ten years.” I turn around. “Yours got short.”

Ellroy half-smiles. “Well, it has been ten years.”

And at the exact moment I reach out to shake his hand, he steps forward to hug me – and I end up hitting him squarely in the stomach, hard, with my outstretched fingers.

“Welcome home, Richard,” he gasps, rubbing his chest.

* * *

Every year, my father dragged us down to the Elgin Walmart for a family portrait. He had them all framed and hung in ascending order leading up the stairs. I used to stare at them whenever I walked to or from my room – going forwards or backwards in time with the pictures.

There was a strange evolution from shot to shot: Each year, we smiled less; each year, my parents looked more uncomfortable standing that close to each other; each year, I inched further away from my dad. By the last picture, we all look stone-faced and pained. I was thirteen in that one – the year my mom left. We didn’t go back to the portrait studio after that.

The evolution of a dysfunctional family. No, the de-evolution. I have to laugh when I think about
it now – because if I don’t laugh, I’ll go crazy.

There was only one good picture of all of us – the very first one. We’re all smiling and optimistic.
Before any bad shit happened, when my birth was still a celebrated event, when my parents still sort of loved each other and had newly-forged hopes to raise a family and live happily ever after.

She took that one with her.

I didn’t even notice it was missing until almost a month after she was gone. Which was strange, because for a while right after she left I kept combing the house for traces of her, something she might have forgotten that she’d need to come back for – I didn’t fool myself into thinking she’d come back for me. But I really didn’t notice much of anything that first month after she left. I didn’t feel anything. I walked around in a daze, hardly eating, leaving my chores unfinished. I forgot day-to-day details, like tying my shoes or putting my glasses on before I left the
house. No one seemed to care, or tried to make me snap out of it. They just felt bad and tried not to mention her name in my presence. Even the bullies at school left me alone.

And then I went through this phase, for a long time, where all I could see was the one thing I didn’t get to have – happy mothers and their children, together, laughing and cuddling, everywhere I went. It was one big long distance commercial hallucination, which made me alternately insanely jealous or insanely disgusted. Sometimes both.

I hate remembering that time of my life.

So I was shuffling up the stairs to my room, probably coming home from school, when I finally
noticed the empty picture hook and the less-faded patch of wallpaper. I ran outside, where my father was weeding his small garden in the front yard.

“What’d you do with it?”

He looked tired. “Do with what?”

“The picture. That picture of us –”

“I didn’t take any picture.”

“But there’s one missing from the stair –”

He grabbed me by the jaw and pulled my face so close to his I could smell the whisky on his breath when he growled, “I said, I didn’t take any damn picture.”

He let go, and I fell forward, smacked palm-first into the dirt. He started walking back to the house. Just before he opened the door, he yelled without turning around, “Your mother took it, Ringo. Now leave me alone.”

Oh.

I retreated to my tool shed, turned on the Ramones as loud at my player would go, plugged in my soldering iron – and whatever numbness I’d felt was sucked away by a sudden, searing, wall punching, radio breaking, sobbing-until-my-throat-stung tantrum of the nth degree.
My body snapped out of whatever state of shock it had been in for the past month. All of Ellroy’s presents were ripped to shreds. My knuckles were bleeding and sore, fingernails torn. They hurt like hell – and I was just so relieved to feel something that I didn’t care.

I wiped my eyes and went back to the house. I found my dad passed out in the living room in front of the Zenith, empty bottle at the foot of the chair. Dragging him to bed had been my mother’s chore. I tried to lift him, but he was too heavy to move.

Fuck it, I thought. That was really the beginning of the end for our relationship; I just left him there.

* * *

We’re driving along 275, my feet up on the dashboard. Surreal and uncomfortable. I look out of the window and then quickly look away. It’s too different from DC, that’s what it is.

No. It’s too familiar.

Ellory’s been trying to make friendly conversation. I can’t deal with it; I don’t even look at him when I answer, just stare out the window.

“You know, you’re a pain in the ass to get a hold of.”

“Other people manage.”

“How was the flight?”

“Crappy.”

“You got tall, man. Last time I saw you, you were still a little shorter than me.”

“Just six feet.”

“How’s DC? Different then Nebraska, eh?”

“Yep.”

“You still into computers? I bet you make a lot of money with that.”

“Yeah, I wish.”

“Well . . . could be worse. You could be here.”

“I am here.”

“True. Glad to be home?”

I snort.

He starts veering the car toward the shoulder, then comes to a sudden stop. It’s a good thing I have my seatbelt on – but my feet skid off the dash and slam right into the windshield. “Hey, man, easy on the brakes!”

Ellroy glares at me, then gets out of the car and slams the door shut. He just stands there, arms
crossed, watching the traffic whiz by. I don’t know what to do or what he wants me to do, so I get out and join him.

Angry silence. Then, “Get over it, Richard.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He shakes his head. “It means that you don’t have the right to come here and act like the world owes you a favor.”

“Wait a minute –”

“No, I want you to hear this. You know, after you left your dad got really depressed. He tried to kill himself a couple of years ago. You didn’t know that, did you? I was the only person in the whole damn county that went to see him in the hospital. When they released him, it was
on the condition that I would have custodial responsibility. Do you know what that means? I had to visit him once a week and make sure he wasn’t dead. Once a week, for two years. I wouldn’t have done that for my own stepfather.”

I feel like he just punched me in the throat. “Well. Thanks,” I mumble.

“I’m not telling you this so you can thank me. I want you to appreciate the situation – usually, that responsibility is given to the patient’s children. But you weren’t here. I couldn’t find you. So I did it.”

I can’t even look at him anymore. I look at my Converse. My glasses keep sliding down my nose, and I keep pushing them up again. It’s annoying – but anything’s easier than looking at Ellroy right now.

“Whatever anger you have is your own problem. Deal with it however you need to. And I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be angry. I know. Just don’t be angry at me. You may not believe this, but I have never done anything but try to help you,” he says earnestly.

It’s funny, I think, how many times have I had this conversation with Frohike? Same words, same pushing my glasses up while I stare at my feet, same feeling like the lowest form of Total Shit while Frohike makes his speech and gets to sound all high and mighty.

Too many.

Too many, to the point where I’ve stopped trying to defend myself: I’m always wrong, they’re always right. Which is why I can’t stop myself from blurting out, petulantly, “Like you ‘help’ my mother?”

He stares at the cars again. Then he says, after a while, “That’s not fair. I loved your mother. She meant a lot to me.”

I stop hearing him. Ellroy’s still talking, but suddenly all I hear are these words: Loved. Meant.

And it’s not so much that he’s talking in the past tense, but that look in his eyes. Vacant. Like something was stolen from him.

“Richard? Are you all right?” I dimly feel something tug at my arm.

“She’s dead.”

“Yeah, she –” he stops short. “Oh my god. You didn’t know.”

All the nausea from the plane comes slamming back. I’m on my knees before I know it, and there’s nothing in my stomach but seltzer and Dramamine and some coffee I bought in the airport, and in between heaves all I can do is mumble, “It’s not fair, it’s not fucking fair.”

If Frohike were here, he’d at least hold my hair back – well, probably. If he wasn’t mad at me or anything.

Ellroy just stands and watches. Thanks for the fucking help.

* * *

My father sold the farm eventually. It shouldn’t have surprised me. My mother was gone, and he knew – no matter how much he may have wished it wasn’t true – that I wasn’t going to stick around much longer. He certainly knew I didn’t want to be a farmer.

But I really didn’t expect him to sell it. At least, not while I was still living there. That would be like admitting defeat, and my father never admitted defeat.

It happened, without warning, on some overly-warm spring day. A strange man in a suit came by our house and asked to speak to my dad – ‘strange,’ because I’d never seen him before. I knew everyone that had ever come to our house – okay, not hard when you’ve lived with the same few hundred people all your life – and none of them ever wore suits.

He didn’t say much to me, except to notice my hair and say, “Don’t you kids ever go to the barber these days? Got one about your age too, same thing.” I think he was trying to relate to me or something, but it just came off as condescending.

My father greeted him nervously; the first time I remembered seeing my father nervous. If my suspicions had been aroused before, I was downright paranoid now. I hung in the
background, listening in, trying to figure out what was going on. But the conversation was all surface, nothing revealing – except for the fact that Suit Man kept calling my father ‘sir’ – also a first.

When they left the house and started walking around the grounds, I tried to follow them. They walked for a while – at that point, my father owned about seven hundred acres – but in flat Nebraska it was hard to find ways to hide myself in the scenery. I had to settle for picking a fixed vantage point, pretending to be heavily involved in some task, and just try to keep them in sight.

After almost an hour, the best theory I could come up with was that my father was giving Suit Man a tour – which seemed really unlikely. A tour of what? Cow pies?

Of course, I found out in about fifteen minutes that that’s exactly what they had been doing.

The ended up in the barn. I crouched behind one of old horse stalls – a throwback to my grandfather, who kept horses on the farm before my dad took over – and watched and listened.

“This is a good piece of property you have, sir.”

“I know,” my father said. He sounded . . . I tried to place the emotion: He sounded numb.

“Frankly, it’s perfect for us.”

“I’m sure it is.” Same tone of voice.

“In fact – and I hate to even mention this, because you’re really giving us a wonderful price – I’m curious as to why you’re selling it in the first place.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the land,” my father was suddenly angry, defensive – familiar territory. I was almost relieved. You tell ‘em, dad!

“No, no, not at all. I never meant to imply – I was just – curious.” Now Suit Man sounded nervous. “Listen, sir, I have all the papers with me. I took the liberty of preparing them a few days ago, based on what we talked about over the phone. If you’re ready, we can sign them now.”

My father nodded and Suit Man pulled a pen out of thin air. Papers were signed and re-signed. They shook hands. Suit Main left. I blinked, and it was over. The farm was gone.

My father stood in the middle of the barn, holding a fistful of carbon copies. His shoulders shook, I thought, in anger. Then I realized – he was crying! Of course, I had to notice, even when he thought he was alone he tried to hold it in, crying through clenched teeth. He looked
around, like he was desperate to remember what he saw.

That’s when he saw me.

My hands and feet went cold, and I thought, this is it, he’s going to kill me! But all he said was, “Come here.” Numb.

I walked over to him. His eyes were raw and watery. “How long’ve you been there?”

“The whole time,” I admitted quietly.

He slapped me. Hard. My glasses dislodged from behind my ear, and hung crooked. I didn’t try to fix them; I was too shocked. He’d never slapped me before, open palmed, stinging. He’d rarely hit me at all in the past few years, which I frankly assumed meant I wasn’t worth the effort – a lot of other kids in my school regularly came to class with bruises or welts. It was pretty common, and all I ever thought about it was well, at least your parents touch you.

“Why?” I choked out. “Why’d you sell it?”

“What’s the point?” he said, his voice rising. “I’m not going to be around forever, and I won’t trust this place to hired help. It’s a damn joke. You’re my only child, and lord knows you’re not going to care about this place when you can play with your computers.” He spat the word out, like it tasted bad. “I might as well sell it off now, make a little profit, and retire in dignity.” He was huffing, his cheeks striped where tears tracked through the thin layer of dirt that was always on
his face.

“You’re right, I don’t want to be a lousy farmer – there are a hundred more valuable things I can do with my life!” I clamped my hand over my mouth, immediately regretting what I said. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t – ”

He slapped me again, hard enough to bring me to my knees. My glasses went flying.

When he finally spoke, that numbness had returned tohis voice. “There’s nothing shameful about being a farmer, Richard. It’s good work. My father was a farmer, and his father before him. This land’s been in our family for generations, since before the Dust Bowl. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

I said nothing, staggered back to my feet. My cheek burned. I just remembered the look in his eyes after Suit Man left with our farm on a piece of paper. He’d cried – !

“When I get the money, I’ll give you your share. Then I don’t want to ever hear you asking for my support again. You could have had this place. I know you don’t think much of it, but it would’ve made you a good, honest living. Now it’s gone, everything the Langlys worked for. Your choice. Remember that.”

He didn’t stick around for my answer – not that I had one to give. He parted the doors of the barn and walked out into the open field. Just before he went totally blurry I saw him ball up his hand, the one he slapped me with, and shove it into his pocket like a bad habit.

That was a month before I left. For some reason, that’s the last good image I have of him in my mind – walking away from me in his overalls and boots, walking back to his big, empty house: His wife and son driven away, his livelihood and family legacy sold off. Out of focus. Thoroughly defeated.

So why didn’t it feel like a victory? I just felt nauseous.

* * *

“They turned our farm into a strip mall?!”

I lean against the hood of the car, cross my arms. Barnes and Nobles. Virgin. The Gap. CompUSA. Body Shop. It’s endless and tacky, concrete, ugly hicks and their ugly hick kids swarming all over. All over my dad’s farm. I remember smug Suit Man, whipping a pen out of thin air. Fuck you, man, I hope you stab yourself with that pen.

“A strip mall.” I repeat slowly. “They’re turning Saltville into a commercial penitentiary.”

“Already happened, Ringo.”

And I wince at the sound of my nickname. No one’s called me that, so casually, in years.

“We thought you were boycotting the funeral,” Ellroy said after a while. “I called everyone in DC to let you know, and when I didn’t hear from you, I figured it was out of some conscious decision. And honestly? That really made me furious. I thought, if you wanted to miss your own mother’s funeral, that was your damn issue. I wasn’t going to chase you about it.”

“Yeah, well, did you ever think that maybe I didn’t know?”

It doesn’t take much effort to figure it out: Smithee and I stopped talking after I drove him out of business with LanglyVision. I just remember trying to stay out of his way for a long time after that – him and his friends, all of whom could beat the living crap out of me if they’d ever wanted to. All the people Ellroy would’ve called. Whether they deliberately withheld the information, or just never saw me – I don’t dwell on that. And anyway, it doesn’t matter any more.

“I don’t know what to say,” Ellroy inhales slowly. “I’m real sorry.”

And he does look sorry. A part of me wants to tell him I understand, he did what he felt he had to do. But the part of me that really doesn’t understand – by far, the vast majority – wants to grab him by the balls and scream really loudly, “Who gave you the fucking right? She was MY mother!”

My mother. It’s been sixteen years since I’ve spoken to her, or seen her for more than a second. I used to hope – whether or not I really believed it – that sixteen years was a surmountable passage of time, something that could be mended together with the right amount of reconciliation and understanding. I dealt with not having her for sixteen years, if only because I assumed when I got her back, we’d have longer than that to make up for it.

Suddenly it’s a life sentence.

Sixteen. Thirty-two. Forty-eight. Sixty-four. Eighty. Ninety-six. Ninety-six times sixteen is one-thousand-five-hundred-and-thirty-six time sixteen is twenty-four-thousand-five-hundred-and-seventy-six times sixteen is three-hundred-and-ninety-three-thousand-two-hundred-and-sixteen times sixteen is – Too. Fucking. Late.

I have to find a way to pretend it doesn’t matter anymore. But I feel tears welling up again. I hastily wipe them away. It’s useless, crying over spilled milk – it won’t change anything.

“I saw her in DC,” I say, shaky. “I used to go see her every week, for a while. Not, you know, talk to her – I just watched her. When I stopped seeing her I thought she moved . . .” What I don’t add is that I thought she’d moved back to Saltville, to live with Ellroy.

I hadn’t had the energy to track her down again; I wasn’t sure I’d wanted to. Now the choice is taken away from me.

Again.

Ellroy’s silent for a minute. Then he says, “Come on, let’s go. They’re bastards about letting people in past visiting hours.”

* * *

People tell me I’m not normal. And I’m just like, how the hell was I supposed to know how to be normal?

Who’s supposed to teach you that crap? Your parents, right? And my parents didn’t know normal from a cow’s ass. How do you know what normal is when you don’t even know basic things that people are supposed to take for granted, like, do my parents love me? Do they love each other? Then why do they treat me like that, why do they treat each other like that?

That’s not normal. That’s fucking confusion.
I’ll say this much: I tried to figure out what normal was, by watching other people. And I figured it out – it’s like being in a straitjacket. Like Byers, in his fucking three-piece suits. Total conformity.

I swear, on a day to day basis I try not to think about this stuff too hard. But sometimes I can’t help it.

Okay, there was this one year, when I was eleven or twelve, when my mom would leave me home alone at least one afternoon a week. She’d say she was going out for a little while, but then she wouldn’t be back for hours. And my dad would be out in the field, so basically I’d
be all alone in this big house. And I’d hear things – old house sounds, I guess – or I’d imagine seeing Boogie Men, or whatever, creeping around outside the windows. I’d get scared. I’d lock all the doors, and I mean all the doors: Front, back, side, cellar, attic – I’d even lock any lockable windows. And I’d run to my room and shut the door and crawl under my blanket – because the one place you’re safe from Bad Things is under the blanket, with all your limbs tucked securely inside the protective quilted barrier. I usually heard my dad knocking, right away, when he was ready to come inside.

But sometimes it’s hard to hear when you’re hiding under a blanket.

He wouldn’t be too happy having to wait outside after a long day of work, pounding on the door until I eventually came downstairs to let him in. The first couple of times this happened, he kicked my butt around the house until my mom came home. Then he’d turn on her for leaving me alone in the house, and how dare she do that when she knows he doesn’t have the energy to watch me after work, and how dare she not teach me better manners than to leave my own father standing locked out on the porch, and how dare she – whatever he felt like ranting about.

The third time, he just dragged me out to the porch.

“See how you like it, Ringo,” he spat. He went back inside and locked the door. I walked around the side of the house – locked. Back door – locked. I went back to the porch and sat on the steps with my arms around my knees.

I sat there for hours. I must have fallen asleep; I heard the car pull up, heard voices saying goodnight to each other. But it was all hazy. I didn’t even open my eyes until my mother nudged me awake.

“Come on, it’s late. Get inside, and go to bed.”

I shuffled sleepily up the stairs, into my bed. I feel asleep with my glasses on. I didn’t think twice
about the other voice in the car, saying goodnight to my mom. It didn’t even occur to me that I recognized the voice – but if it had, I would’ve put two and two together – and done, what? Hide out in my tool shed and listen to music? Get on my bike and run away? Destroy my computer, so I could distract myself from reality by putting it back together? It wouldn’t have made any
difference if I’d figured out who my mother was with.

I really shouldn’t think about this stuff.

There are people all over suing their parents after regressive therapy makes them remember instances of abuse, claiming Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or whatever. I’ll never have that problem – I remember everything already. My problem is trying not to remember it, especially when I feel all the rough edges seep into my adult life. Like how easily things piss me off. And how I act exactly like my dad when I get pissed off.

Of course, I’ll never sue anyone over this – I’m not that lame. But I do feel justified, when people tell me I’m not normal, in saying really obnoxiously, “Fuck you and your idea of normal! I’m trying to change the world – what do you do?”

* * *

His room is stark white. A fluorescent light hums above me, dimmed to a green glow. It seems so dark in here. A pretty nurse tells me it’s because his eyes have been closed for too long and will be overly sensitive to stimuli, if he opens them – and a dark room will make it easier for his eyes to acclimate.

She doesn’t seem hopeful that they’ll open at all, ever. But the fact that they’re keeping the lights dim – just in case – gives me some measure of comfort.

Like maybe, he’ll get better. Like maybe I can ignore the mummified look to his skin. Maybe I
can pretend I haven’t read his charts and seen the words esophageal bleeding and liver failure – Ignorance and denial never sounded so good.

They might as well turn all the lights on. Point his bed at the sun and open the blinds. Hell,
bring in a couple of those trillion kilowatt FBI-issued Xenon flashlights I’ve seen Mulder and Scully use and blast them directly into his eyes.

It won’t make any difference.

I think about my mother, and then quickly try not to think of her, and think of her anyway.
The words ‘too late’ are becoming a painfully familiar chorus.

* * *

I have this nasty habit of hanging out with men old enough to be my father. It doesn’t take a
whole lot of psychiatric deduction to figure out why.

The first one was Mr. Greene – my third grade teacher at Saltville Elementary. He had a lisp,
which I’m sure made him the subject of teasing when he was a kid – so he immediately recognized me as a kindred spirit, a fellow victim. I was too young to be self-conscious about this. All that mattered was that he never called on me in class, even though he knew I knew the answer. He let me stay with him after school and help tutor other students in math, even after I graduated from his year. He used to say to me, “You’re the only smart one of them, Richard. You’re going to go somewhere,” and his support and recognition made me feel loved.

Until some kids took to shoving me into a dumpster behind the school. They would sit on the wooden lid, five or six of them at a time, and chant the ever-original teacher’s pet song. They did that every day, for a week. But it wasn’t the bullies that made me stop helping Mr. Greene – although they did tend to keep me trapped with the garbage until the tutoring sessions were long over. I was used to bullies; I was the class scapegoat.

It was the fact that Mr. Greene never noticed I was gone. He never asked why I didn’t show up to help him for a week – not that I would’ve admitted to being held hostage in a dumpster. But it would’ve been nice to know he cared.

Frohike is my old man now, as wrong as that sounds. Byers too, sometimes, even though we’re pretty much the same age; he just acts older, and paternity fits him like a well-tailored suit. But Frohike – of course, we’ve never talked about our relationship in those terms, but I actually think he feels the same way about me: Fatherly. I mean, let’s face it. Frohike’s practically old enough to be my father. And I see the way he acts with Byers, who has his own royally screwed up relationship with his dad. Byers is more openly needy, so Frohike openly responds to that.

He takes a totally different approach with me. He doesn’t feed into my self-pity, or put up with my sarcasm, or back away when my temper explodes – all of which happen on an embarrassingly regular basis. He fights me, makes me justify it. Frohike had me figured out the day we met, as soon as I flinched away from his hand on my shoulder. Textbook case.

But Ellroy . . . Ellroy was the most influential old man.

He was younger than my dad, but at least a generation older than me. And he looked more like me – or anyway, he looked like what I look like now. For starters, Ellroy was the only grown-up in Saltville with long hair. It didn’t endear him to the right-wing locals; we’re talking about a town that thought anything longer than a military buzz cut made you a Commie. Even though Ellroy kept his hair pulled back in a neat pony tail, my father referred to him as ‘that damn hippie fool.’

I don’t think he liked Ellroy too much.

Ellroy was also the only person in town with an visible tattoo. It was faded, handwritten in a circle on his left forearm, just below the crook of his elbow:

IT TAKES STRENGTH TO BE GENTLE AND KIND

I asked him about it once, before I knew better than to be nosy about shit like that, and he just looked kind of sad. “I got it after I left Omaha,” was all he offered. I didn’t ask him anything else. I recognized the handwriting; it was his.

On top of teaching me about electronics, Ellroy also got me started on my music collection. He dubbed most of his bootlegs and live shows for me. He was really into the NY punk scene. He had all of the Ramones’ CBGB performances on tape – it’s probably worth a fortune now. I heard my first Ramones song in his store, first Stooges, first MC5; he played whatever he wanted and let the customers decide whether to listen or leave.

I think his only redeeming quality – at least to the more conservative townspeople – was Ellroy’s loyalty to the University of Nebraska ’Huskers. He was rarely without his battered Go Big Red! cap – and during football season, he made sure every TV in his store was tuned in to the game. He’d even stay open late and set up chairs and let whoever wanted to come in and watch the game with him.

But as far as I was concerned, the coolest thing about Ellroy was that he never judged me. I could come to his store almost any time of day and stay as long as I wanted, and he never asked why or made me leave. He was my escape – from bullies, from chores, from my parents. From what I knew of him, he’d had a pretty shitty life himself. He grew up in Omaha, poor, no
father – and that was during a time when single parent homes were still really uncommon. He was never too specific about his past, like he didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about it. There was just something about how intuitively he understood what I was feeling that made me think he’d seen a lot of it firsthand.

I didn’t even mind so much when he called me Ringo, even though I asked him not to. Coming from Ellroy, it was almost an endearment; he really liked the Beatles. And when he told me Ringo Starr’s first name was also Richard, I actually fooled myself into thinking the nickname was kind of cool – but only coming from Ellroy.

I spent a lot more time in his store after my mom left – being home alone with my dad became increasingly intolerable. The last few seasons had been bone dry, which was terrible for corn farms. And what’s terrible for corn production is terrible for dairy farms because it means we don’t have enough food to support the herd.

We had to auction off about a third of the cows. Basically, we lost serious income – and we didn’t have much to lose in the first place. My dad had to work double time just to break even. He could barely afford to pay local school kids to help him, and the fact that I wasn’t much use around the farm just created all this extra tension between us.

He even started selling stuff around the house to make some extra money. He sold my bike. He sold my old computer. He never asked my permission. When I confronted him about it, he got all defensive and said, “If you can’t help me with the work, the least you can do is make these sacrifices.”

I really didn’t care about the stuff he sold – well, okay, I was angry about the bike. When I was fifteen and carless, how else was I supposed to get around in Saltville? But all I really wanted him to do was ask me first. I would’ve helped him; I would’ve been flattered if he’d asked for my help at all. He just didn’t get it.

Ellroy helped me get through all of that by giving me a place to go when I couldn’t face going home, letting me vent when I needed to, teaching me cool stuff, feeding me music and stories about Life Outside of Nebraska. I’m still grateful to him for that.

But it just made what he did even worse.

He’d been helping me plan my departure for a while. He was the one who convinced me to go to Washington, arguing that the cost of living would be easier for me to handle than in NewYork. He also pointed out, as delicately as possible, that DC’s smaller, somewhat-Southern hospitality might be an easier adjustment for a sheltered farmboy to make. Plus, he knew people in DC. He introduced me over the phone to some friends of his, including Smithee. It was settled: I’d go to Washington. I’d have a job. I’d have a network of people that knew me; or at least knew someone that knew me. There were telecommunication jobs popping up in cities all over the place – even in Omaha – so I never doubted there’d be similar opportunities in DC. For once in my life, I had Real Plans.

He gave me a going-away present the night before I left – with a clear warning not to open it until I arrived in DC. It was plainly wrapped, flat, kind of square shaped. I thought it was some vinyl, and I knew it would be nice and loud, whatever it was. I hugged him tightly, went home, set up my record player, and opened the present. Ellroy wrapped it with one of his old ’Huskers shirts – on which he wrote with black magic marker: DON’T FORGET YOUR ROOTS.

It wasn’t vinyl. It was that missing family portrait. The one my mother took with her when she left. Expensively framed – which was a shame, because I was so shocked that I dropped it at my feet, promptly breaking the glass.

I ran the two miles to Ellroy’s store – he lived on the floor above. I was dripping with sweat. I pounded on the door. When that didn’t work, I threw pebbles at his upstairs window. I was about to start throwing rocks. Finally a light went on, and his face appeared in the window. He winced; he wasn’t happy to see me.

“Shit, Ringo,” he called down. “I told you not to open it.”

“Yeah? Well fuck you!”

“She told me to give it to you when you left Saltville. Don’t kill the messenger.”

“Fuck you,” I shouted again; clearly, I was on a roll. “How long?”

“How long what?”

“How long have you been fucking my mother?”

“It’s not like that. We aren’t fucking,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was lying, but I suddenly felt
nauseous hearing him use that word. “I’m helping her. Like I help you –”

“Where is she?” I screamed so loudly my voice cracked.

“She’s not even in Nebraska. She’s been living in DC for a while.”

“DC?” I repeated dully. I thought about the one-way ticket sitting on top on my suitcase, in my room. Ellroy and my mom?

“Why the hell do you really think I wanted you to go out there? Do yourself a favor, and talk to her. She misses you, Ringo, she feels bad –”

“Bullshit. I don’t need your help anymore, you hippie fuck.” I was losing it, getting choked up, hysterical. Stay angry, man, stay angry, he’s lying to you, he betrayed you, don’t think about what he’s saying.

She misses me?

It had to be a lie. Because if she really felt bad she could’ve called, she could’ve come back any time she wanted.

Hah! If she really felt bad, she never would’ve left.

“Listen,” he called. “I was there when she needed someone. And I was here when you needed someone. Now it’s between you and her. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. Okay, Ringo?”

Through gritted teeth, “Don’t fucking call me that ever again.”

And I stormed away. At least, I’d like to think I stormed away. In reality, I just didn’t want him to see the twisted look on my face from trying not to cry, and not being able to stop. Sometimes I do wish I was more like my dad – he wouldn’t have cried at all. He would have just gone upstairs and beat the shit out of Ellroy. I bet he’d feel a hell of a lot more satisfied than I felt right then.

I just felt numb, helpless. The way I imagined my dad felt when he sold the farm.

It took me an hour to walk home. I raided my dad’s supply of Old Thompson. I don’t remember much after that, except that I cut the bottom of my foot on the glass from the broken frame. And I remember thinking just before I passed out, well, at least I can do something as well as my dad.

It would be a long time before I missed anything about Nebraska.

* * *

I think he moved. Am I imagining things? Did he open his eyes?

I feel guilty because I find myself eyeing all the outlets in the room, wanting to plug in my laptop.
It’s like a security blanket. The familiar feeling of smooth, plastic keys beneath my fingers, the power to control everything linked to that streamlined case. I hold myself back, feel guilty for even thinking about it.

Did Ellroy leave or is he still here? No, he must still be waiting outside because we drove in my
rented GEO and he gave me the keys and I can feel them poking my thigh.

He’s not moving now, except for the rough rise and fall of his chest, twitching eyes. I probably am imagining things.

* * *

Obviously there was a reason Ellroy gave me the picture.

About a week after I stepped off the bus in DC, settling into my squatter’s paradise, still unpacking. I gingerly lifted Ellroy’s present out of my suitcase. Brushing shards of glass off my clothes, I sat on the edge of my bed – a mattress on the floor – and stared at the picture. The backdrop was some idyllic farm scene, red barn, trees blowing in the breeze. But the backdrop
itself was marred and creased, frayed around the edges.

I’d never noticed that before.

I was three. My hair was so white, it overexposed detail-less. I was sitting on my mother’s lap; I
didn’t remember ever sitting on her lap when I was a kid. I wasn’t looking at the camera, but at something that must have caught my attention outside of the frame – maybe some assistant with a toy, trying to make me laugh? I had this look on my face, like I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

At a glance, it looked like a smile; I always thought I was smiling in that picture.

My father had a familiar deer-caught-in-headlights statement. It’s the same in almost every photo I’ve seen of him; he can never prepare himself for the flash. I was surprised by how much I look like him. Years before his body developed a soft, alcoholic paunch, he had the same angular lines in his face that I saw whenever I looked in a mirror.

He was sitting next to my mother, his hand resting on her knee; an uncomplicated gesture of affection.

And then I saw something else I hadn’t noticed before, a blur of movement, captured and frozen
by the shutter: My mother’s hand, pulling away from my father’s. He wasn’t touching her knee; he was trying to hold her hand. And she’d yanked it away, right as the camera went off.

The happy family portrait was unraveling before my eyes.

I sat there, knees to my chest, brushing my fingers across the pebbled photograph. I had this hot urge to throw it away, quickly covered by something like nostalgia. Almost without realizing it, I started crumpling the picture up in my fist.

That’s when I saw the address penciled on the back. Handwriting I hadn’t seen in years.

It was a local address, in Georgetown. I asked Smithee where it was. He showed me on a map, some random cross section of streets on a piece of paper. I touched the place on the map where the building would stand; it seemed like I had to touch things to make sure they were
real, these days.

Maybe Ellroy was telling me the truth?

I’d been doing a damn good job of pretending I hadn’t heard what he said to me the night before I left. I could even walk by a phone book without wanting to look her name up. I was cruising in a state of blissful ignorance and denial. Maybe it didn’t feel good. But it felt safe.

Better safe then sorry. Right. Right?

Unless Ellroy was telling the truth.

Eventually, not knowing became worse than taking the risk. Even so, it took me months to work up the courage to venture into her neighborhood. Every time I crossed zip codes, my stomach would slip down to my feet and I’d get so light-headed I’d have to sit down. Iwore this statement, a practiced mixture of boredom and frustration, the mask of someone who knows where they’re
going and isn’t in the wrong place and is probably late for an appointment. But every time I passed a woman of about the right age and hair color, my face would go slack. My head would whip around to follow them. Sometimes they’d give me dirty looks and clutch their
purses a little tighter.

Some mask.

It took me another month to walk on her street. And the only reason I had the nerve to do that was because Smithee was with me the first time, and it was such an absurdly late time of night that I knew there was minimal risk of encounter. It was almost an accident, ending up there in the first place. We had to pass near that part of Georgetown on our way back from some business meeting. I just maneuvered us a few blocks east and acted like I wanted to visit a friend.

We stopped across the street from her building. Nice, tree lined street dotted with brick townhouses. Her building looked no different than the others. I wondered which window was hers. A dog barked, and somewhere in the distance homeless people were banging on garbage can lids. I felt rooted to the ground, tense, like if someone touched me I’d explode in a thousand pieces.

“They’re prolly sleeping, man” Smithee whined, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “You gonna call them down, or wait here all fucking night? Cause I’m going to sleep.”

“No, I’m coming,” I said. Smithee was right. I wasn’t going to wait here all night – because I was too afraid of seeing her in the morning.

I gave one last glance at the vacant windows, then ran to catch up with Smithee, who was already walking back home to his bed.

* * *

“I’m sorry, dad.”

“I’m sorry, dad.”

“I’m sorry, dad. I’m sorry! Wake up!”

He doesn’t answer. A nurse walks in and asks me if I’m okay, do I need anything, shouldn’t I go home and get some rest, and I say, “No, I’m not okay, but I’m better than him!” And she backs away like I punched her or something, and I try to apologize but she’s already gone.

* * *

Frohike was the one who found the warehouse. He called me and Byers together for an unofficial meeting. He drove us down to Takoma Park, pulled up right in front of the building and said ceremoniously, “This is it, buddies. Our new home.”

Byers and I looked at each other like, What the hell is he talking about?

And Frohike just shoved the newspaper ad in our hands. We had to admit, the price per square foot was within our budget – owing largely to the location, of course. There was nothing for blocks but phone lines, old factories, and homeless people. The sort of place that always looked overcast, even if it was sunny.

“It’s perfectly inconspicuous,” Frohike said. He started poking around the corrugated steel façade. “We can put in a camera, right here. And check it out – free parking.”

Byers looked distinctly uncomfortable. “You want us to live here? Is it even zoned for residential
occupancy? Is it legal? Is it safe?” His eyebrows winced up with every word; they were practically floating above his head.

I put in my two cents. “There are separate bedrooms, right?”

Frohike looked at us like we were crazy to question him. “There will be.”

So we bought the place. It was a year after we started publishing. Our Xerox-quality ‘zine was steadily snowballing into a legitimate publication: We actually sent it out to a press instead of drawing straws to see who got to spend an afternoon in Kinkos’ self-service copy center. And readership had increased to a point where the ‘zine was paying for itself. Sometimes we even
made a little profit. We were only a few bucks shy of affording a colorized front page; that’s moving on up in the publishing world. So what if we had barely four hundred subscribers?

We moved into the warehouse within a month. Byers got first dibs on the bedrooms – although, they weren’t bedrooms at the time. He picked the only one without a view of the garbage incinerator in the building behind ours. I guess he preferred the giant air conditioner ducts and dying trees across the street. My room was the smallest. All of our walls were fashionable cinder block, ceilings lined with exposed pipe.

Strange. But it was real homey.

Well obviously, not the warehouse itself – although I’d like to think, in time, that we turned it into something as personalized and comfortable as a home. But the homey feeling came with the fact that I was living with people I liked – even admired. I had a job that was totally satisfying and not illegal. I felt like Byers and Frohike would care if I suddenly jumped on a bus and booked town.

Some days I flattered myself into thinking they might even try to stop me.

Of course, I never let the guys know how I felt. Bravado and self-possession more than covered up for my terminal insecurity. Granted, I have to thank Frohike for pointing that out to me.

I think his exact words were, “Langly, the day you admit your kung-foo isn’t always the best will be the day I finally get to know the guy I’ve been sitting next to all these years.”

Touché. Anyway, the bottom line was, I had a safety net: People that cared about me.

Since that embarrassing stalk-session with Smithee a couple of years ago, I hadn’t tried to contact my mom again. I’d put the photograph away and tried not to think about it – except I found myself reverting back to that old habit of fixating on all the happy families I saw on the street, and when I tried to talk about it to Smithee he just told me to share whatever drugs I
was on. Some friend.

But Smithee was a distant memory now. I had Byers and Frohike – my surrogate parents, pretty much – to catch me if I fell. And I saw what losing that Modeski woman was doing to Byers. It was killing him. I wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to me.

So the photograph came out of my drawer. I went back to that random intersection of streets, sat on the steps across from her building, in broad daylight, and watched and waited. It became a ritual for which I went out of my way to make myself anonymous: Pulling my hair through the back of a baseball cap, swapping out my glasses for prescription shades, buying incognito jogging sweats. I even stopped shaving until I had something resembling a beard and mustache – although my facial hair was too orange and shaggy for anything as neatly sculpted as Byers’. The end result was sort of Suburban Yeti. I barely recognized myself. Not taking any chances,
though; I knew I didn’t exactly have the kind of face that blended into a crowd.

And it worked. I saw her.

My reaction was spring-loaded, palpable, like a vacuum filling with a rush of air. Like I suddenly had to laugh, cry, and yell at the same time. Or like I could go crazy. It was the same feeling I’d had back in my tool shed, years ago, right after she left, when I snapped out of my reverie and all this raw emotion flooded my body – which promptly translated into raw destruction.

“Mom?” I croaked out. Too softly – she didn’t hear.

Now the overriding feeling wasn’t anger. It was something closer to regret. It was like, why couldn’t I have done this sooner, instead of wasting all this time? It was like, okay, it was unfair of her to put the ball in my court, when she was the one who left – but relationships go both ways, and I should’ve done something –

But I didn’t have the guts to do anything. She walked into her building and I lost her again.

So I went back. Once or twice a week, every week. I never worked up the courage to say anything to her. Didn’t want to rock the boat – it was enough, for now, to know she was accessible. She was a real person again, not just some memory. It was like fast forwarding
a movie and watching a character age fifteen years in five minutes. I could see her hair was more grey than blonde, now. She’d gotten a little fatter, a little more stooped. She seemed to like the color blue – in her wardrobe, anyway. I became familiar with her schedule, with the other people in her building, with the people she nodded to in the street. Sometimes I saw her with
bags of groceries. Sometimes she looked like she was going to work, well dressed, with a purse and nice shoes. Sometimes I didn’t see her at all. I made up stories about where she was going when she left, what her apartment looked like. I imagined she had pictures of me hanging on her walls, and I hoped she felt guilty every time she looked at them.

Sounds desperate, but it really felt good just to know that I had the power to reach out to her, talk to her, tell her who I was – if I wanted to. Or not. My choice.

Power. Choice. She took those things from me whenshe left. If she was forcing me to make the next move in our relationship, I had to reclaim them. I mean, it’s not like anyone asked me what I thought when she left. No one came and said, “Okay, Richard, you decide: Your mom stays, or she leaves.”

She sure as hell didn’t. So why did she deserve better treatment?

Was I bitter? Yeah. Stupid? Hell yeah. And it’s easy to say if I knew what I know now, I’d have done everything differently. But I was only twenty-two – what did I know from hindsight?

I don’t even know what the guys thought about what I was doing. I just sort of snuck out when whenever I could without arousing too much attention. It was hard to sneak anywhere around them. Byers seemed to think I’d taken up smoking. He kept lecturing me about it. I would find these anti-smoking brochures slipped under my door, strategically placed warnings about Joe Camel in my e-mail. Good for him. I let him think whatever he wanted. It was kind of funny, actually.

Frohike was harder to convince. He muttered stuff about dissension in the ranks every time I went out. One night, he just stayed up and waited for me to come home. He was sitting on our ratty old sofa, arms folded across his chest like an angry father.

“So who lives there, huh? Blonde? Redhead? Informant? Operative?”

“Whoa, slow down there –”

“I think I deserve to know if my coworker – nay, housemate – is a Judas.”

Coworker, housemate. I noticed he left off friend.

“Are you going senile? You followed me around, confront me about something you know nothing about, and you’re saying I betrayed your trust?”

He just shrugged like, well, did you?

I threw my hands up in the air. “Time out. This isn’t fair. You’re – you’re bribing me. You’re saying if I don’t tell you what I’m doing – with no guarantee that you’ll even believe me – then you get to keep thinking I’m a – a – what the hell did you call me?”

“Judas.” But he didn’t say it like he was answering my question. He said it like that’s what I was.

“Fine,” I huffed, dripping sarcasm. “Get ready for this, because it’s a real front page conspiracy: My mother lives there.”

He was real quiet for a second. Then he snorted, “Sure, Langly. And Area 51 is giving public tours now.”

“See! See, that’s exactly what I mean!” I was pacing around the room, picking stuff up and putting it down again in a completely different place. Nervous habit. Frohike was eyeing me. “Is this what hell is like? My mother really does live there. I’m –” Stalking. “I’m trying to get in touch with her.”

“You call spying on someone from across the street getting in touch with them? No wonder you’re having a dry spell with the ladies. So, out with it. And put that disk back where you got it. There’s stuff on it for next week’s issue and I don’t want it to get lost.” He folded his arms, expectantly. “Well?”

I was glad for the beard, so Frohike couldn’t see how angry red my face was. I dropped the disk on our couch, and told him to come to my room. I pulled the family portrait out of my drawer, slapped it on the desk.

“See. That is my mother,” I said. I was almost shouting. I flipped the picture over and shoved my finger at the address. “And that is where she lives.”

“Oh.” He cleared his throat. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.

“You’re damn right, oh!”

He cleared his throat again. “Langly, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you stalking your own mother?”

I turned away from him, arms folded tightly across my chest. “I’m not stalking her. It’s just, I haven’t seen her since, you know, since I was thirteen, and I’m just trying to talk to her, and it’s hard. What do you suggest, Doohickey? Just ring her doorbell and say ‘Hi, I’m your son!’ and hope she doesn’t call the cops?”

He pointed at the address. “If that’s her handwriting – yes. It sounds like she’s expecting you.”

I suddenly felt tired. I carefully replaced the picture in my drawer. “Is the Spanish Inquisition over? Because I really, really don’t feel like talking about this.”

He looked like he was about to say something, then changed his mind. “All right. All right. Can I just give you one piece of advice? Lose the peach fuzz, man. The beard and mustache thing only works on ex-narcs and Santa Claus.”

He sort of patted my shoulder, and left.

I stood there for a second, then went straight to the bathroom and shaved my face. Frankly, it was looking like peach fuzz gone amuck, and it itched like crazy. But I didn’t miss what he was saying between the lines. Not lose the beard.

Be yourself.

* * *

Ellroy walks in, shuts the door carefully behind him, like he doesn’t want to make too much noise.

“Ready to leave?” he whispers

“What’s the point?”

“What?”

“What’s the point of being so damn quiet,” I say. I don’t whisper.

His face screws up for a second, offended. But when he talks again, it’s in a normal voice. “You
know he asked for you when he was still conscious.”

"He did?”

Ellroy continues, “I mean, he wasn’t lucid. He – he was out of it. But he asked for you, all the
time. He asked for your mom, too.” He smiles, like that’s really ironic.

I think about all those evenings my dad would stick his head out of the front door and call me in for dinner, and how I could tell his mood, or whether he’d been drinking, by how he said my name – and whether he used Ringo, or Richard. Like a barometer.

I pick at a piece of lint on my father’s blanket, and my hand brushes against his. I stare at them
together, caught by how similar they are – same patch of freckles along the back; same long, big-knuckled fingers.

And how different. His hand is old – older than it should look at his age. He’s not even 65, and I can practically see through his hand.

“What did he say?”

Ellroy shrugs. “I don’t know. He kept saying ‘Richie,’ like you were just outside the room. I’d tell him you weren’t there, but he’d forget and ask for you anyway. It’s too bad,” He stops, looks pained. “It’s too bad he can’t appreciate the fact that you’re here now.”

Any other time, that remark would’ve hurt. But I’m just remembering how my mom and dad used to call me Richie when I was a little kid. Before Ringo stuck. When my mom was still home. When I was too young to notice how shitty life could be.

And for some reason, remembering this, I feel more peaceful than I have in days.

* * *

The phone rings. Two, three, four times. I think, Byers, you got me into this crap because you answered the phone, so you damn well better answer it now.

Finally, official Byers voice answers, “Lone Gunmen Newspaper Group. How can I help you?”

“Nerd.”

“Langly,” he says; relieved or surprised – maybe both. “How are you?”

I don’t say anything for a little while. It’s weird – a moment ago I really wanted to talk to him, and now I don’t know what to say.

“Langly?” Byers says when I don’t answer.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m still here. Hey, man, shut off the tape.”

His voice goes from überpolite to concerned in one second flat. “What’s wrong?”

I hear a series of clicks, and this low-pitched hum on the line – which you wouldn’t notice unless you knew it was there – suddenly stops, and I know he’s shut the reel-to-reel off. All the times I lied to Mulder about recording his calls; right now I’m so glad Byers is more trusting than I am.

“It’s off. Is everything all right?”

“Well, I need – ” My voice is suddenly unsteady. “Well, this is sort of like the suit thing.”

“Go ahead, Langly, whatever it is.”

Deep breath, and I just start babbling, “I had this dream. Really – um, really weird, and I still feel
like I’m dreaming. It was – okay, I was in the hospital, in my dad’s room, and it’s really dark,
pitch black, it’s – it’s like a void, but I can hear him in the room somewhere, calling my name, but it’s so dark I can’t see where he is, and this is really crazy because it’s such a – such a fucking tiny room that I would totally trip over his bed in real life, but in the dream, you know, I’m a little afraid to walk in the room because it’s so black I feel like I’ll disappear, but my dad’s calling for me and it sounds like he really needs me, really wants me, and I want to go to him, so I’m trying to follow his voice, but every time I try to walk towards it his voice just gets farther away, and the room – the fucking room just keeps getting darker and bigger and it’s like I’m moving but the space is growing exponentially around me so I’m not really getting anywhere, and – and –”

And I can still hear him, I want to add. Even after being awake for two hours, downing a few cups of coffee and trying to forget the haunting image in my head, I finally gave up and called Byers.

I’ve lived next door to the man for years; heard him wake up with a muffled scream and shuffle restlessly around his room at four in the morning a few too many times – of course, the fact that I’m awake and listening doesn’t say much about my own sleep habits.

And I remember what he said right before I left – call if you need anything. I take him up on that because I know he understands the power of nightmares. Sometimes I think our warehouse is really a shelter for the walking wounded.

Now Byers is the quiet one, except I can tell he’s strumming his fingers on a table or something, which he does when he’s lost in thought. Finally he says, “That sounds really bad.”

“I hate this,” I whine.

“It sounds like you want to make peace with him, but you’re afraid he’ll be gone before you get the chance?”

I shrug heavily before I realize the gesture is lost over the phone. “Maybe.”

“I remember when my mother was sick, I felt like I had to make up for all the time I took her for granted. And when she passed away, I felt like hadn’t done enough to let her know I loved her. That’s a terrible burden. I can rationalize it now, but I still feel guilty sometimes.”

It’s strange to hear Byers talk about his mom. He rarely talks about his family, his past. At least
not to me – it’s like an unspoken agreement between us: You don’t dredge up my shit and I won’t dredge up yours. We have enough shit to deal with, anyway, without having to unleash the skeletons in our closets.

“So how do you stop from killing yourself?” I ask, half-joking.

He sort of laughs. “My father. It’s ironic. He didn’t blink when she died, didn’t shed a tear, and hasn’t to this day as far as I know. That’s just who he is. And I saw what a miserable person it made him, to hold it in, to not allow himself to really mourn her. I realized it was better to deal with my feelings, however painful they were, than to deny them completely and end up
like him.”

Byers and Frohike talk like this all the time, borderline-nauseatingly heartfelt conversations
which I was generally never part of – by choice or invitation. But I overhear them talking anyway, and I knew that Frohike would have some intuitive response to Byers’ story. I, on the other hand, had nothing to say in return. Except, “That’s not really it.”

“What’s not it?”

“What you said about your mother. I don’t think the dream was about that at all.”

He’s silent, encouraging me to go on.

“I think it’s sort of the opposite of what you said. I’m not afraid he’ll die before I can tell him I love
him. It’s that he’s –” my voice catches. “He’s going to die before he tells me – ”

I imagine that the people at all these pay phones in the hall are staring at me. My face is red and wet from tears I’m not even trying to hold back anymore, and I suddenly want to say in my defense, I’m not really crying, I’m just tired and it’s been a long, hard day. But what do those people care anyway? They’re all lost in their own desperate phone calls, and I have to stop thinking that everyone cares about me. Paranoia is such a selfish thing.

“I just want him to wake up and tell me he loves me. It’s like I don’t even care whether he lives or dies. I know he’s going to die. I know. I just want –” I’m practically on my knees, confessing. “I’m so fucking selfish.”

“No, no, Langly, it’s totally normal. It’s not about being selfish. It’s about not . . . regretting anything.” He’s silent for a moment, then he says kind of sadly, “I’ve seen you live for so long without regrets. Trust me, don’t start now.”

But I’m hung up on the one word: “It’s normal?” And suddenly, after a lifetime of trying not to care about being normal, it’s feels like the nicest thing in the world.

I hear a voice in the background and Byers asks, “Frohike wants to know how you’re doing. Want to talk to him?”

I do, but I shake my head. “Nah. I should go back to his room, in case –” I let the sentence hang, because Byers knows how it ends. In case he wakes up. In case he says something. In case he needs me.

And I tell him to tell Frohike I’m fine, more or less, and that I’ll be home soon but I don’t know when exactly, and thank you for listening. Byers tells me not to thank him, to take my time, and call him when I know my flight plans.

“I might bus it back, actually. For old times’ sake,” I say.

We hang up, and I walk back into my father’s room.

****