Fiction | December 01, 1991

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Dad, your visit and our agonized parting have stirred up things I’d long since hoped were still for good.  Your every gesture spoke a need to ask how I came to be who and where I am.  Yet I can remember you as a fugitive.  Garner State Park, Texas.  We heard on the car radio the police were after you.  I was eleven, thrilled to be in the company of a criminal.  You who obey all laws great and small, you were deaf to the voice of Authority, fleeing the scene while Mother urged you to turn yourself in.  You were (are) a lean man gnawed with American worry, quenching the fire in your gut with buttermilk and Bach, a virtuoso on your major talent, joking your way clear of painful situations.