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Show •lis leaves him behind for good. "Are you making an identification? Is this your father?" The divers stood around us; up close their faces were young, ordinary and tired. They didn't care. "Who the fuck else would it be?" I said. When I was a kid in grade school I had used to walk home every day by a special shortcut along the railroad tracks; I took it now. The day was turning sour; a southwest wind, a sure bringer of bad weather in this part of the country, had already begun to draw dense clouds across the sky; streaks of rain were dropping toward the hills. When I was seven or eight years old I had come this way playing a game of hopping from one railroad tie to the next; if I missed, someone I loved would die, but if I made it all the way home without a false step I'd get-what? I didn't remember. The things an eight-year old wants. To be happy, to be loved, to be somebody. Not much different from what I want now. I hadn't learned much about life in almost twenty years, because I still expected to get these things eventually. Richness. I wanted richness. And love. Last, but still important, Reason. I wanted things to make sense. The tracks cut through back lots, past lumberyards and warehouses, then in a long steely graceful curve they followed the top of a ridge into vacant land. One winter afternoon, walking along here with my brother Jacob, I had jumped on |
