Richard Allen
[Static, fumbling with microphone.] Like I said, I really can’t talk about it. My father-in-law died shortly after my daughter was killed and so the grief was double, and I lost my son. So it was three in about two years.
John Burns
I seriously doubt if Billy ever went up to that kid’s room and had a man-to-man with him. I know for a fact he wouldn’t call him “son.”
Chuck Stam
Billy had a lisp; something about his teeth and his tongue. So I can see that he might’ve called in the wrong coordinates. That mind-flash — or whatever you want to call it — that Meg, the character Meg, has when she’s in the water and he speaks is about the way he sounded. He was a big questioner. He asked a hell of a lot of questions and then came up with a lot of answers. He loved to talk. He would’ve attended his own funeral for sure.
VARIOUS SUICIDE NOTES
Dear Buddy. Here’s the basic problem as I see it. Now that I’m back, I’m bored with the mystery of life. Why did Meg end up dead in a ditch? Why am I still here? What does it mean that I wake up early in the morning to hear a mourning dove cooing and listen to it intensely, as I did one summer morning a few years back? I lay and listened, knowing that I’d remember that moment forever. I told myself — in bed, shrouded in the cool sheets — that I should and would remember. And the deeper, eternal mysteries that, just a few years ago, I seemed to care so deeply about. That silence between Mom and Dad when the conversation, usually about what to do about Meg, lulled and then they were looking at each other, for just a second, fondly. The question of where time goes when it’s finished evoking the present moment. What it means when history devours a beloved, like Meg, or JFK, or MLK or whoever. I just can’t seem to rise to the occasion of giving the slightest shit anymore. This isn’t the kind of suicide note I’m sure you expect from me. But right now, here, on the edge of doing myself in, it’s all I can come up with. I wrote my draft and now I want to terminate myself before I finish revisions, partly because the entire mess is obviously built around the thing I’m avoiding. As Grandpa said to me years ago, I’m a hider by nature. I’m a loner. I’m sure I’m abnormally reacting to the fact that my sister was killed, on one hand. On the other hand, my own manhood was at stake. Whatever. I’m lonely, sad, and I’ve been beaten. That afternoon, the one you know about already, when I was walking home and jumped by Larry, and John, and some other assholes. They got me. I mean, they told me that Meg was a slut, and then beat the shit out of me. I said a prayer for them, and it was my last prayer. So let it be recorded here that Eugene Allen, on his last day on earth, admitted that he said one last prayer and knew it was going to be his final attempt. I mean, let it be known that I said goodbye to my attempts at forgiveness for those guys, who for me at that time, on the street, walking home, were emblematic — I can admit this — of certain men who have an inclination toward violence, that I also said so long to the inclination to forgive the world in general. In other words, my friend, where is the grace in all this? I mean, the war goes on. I see the photographs. I pay attention. Billy is gone, of course, but the men like him still go off to fight as I write this. (Note: Buddy. I know you’re gonna see this as yet another in a long line of relatively lame suicide notes I’ve composed this summer. This one might be for real. I’ll put it in your mailbox later tonight and you’ll get it before the lights go off. So I’m sure you’re thinking: Ah, man, Eugene does it again, spells out his last thoughts.) Anyway, back to my main point, which is that the deeper mysteries that I used to be able to feel with such ease, and by feel I mean respect, sense, and take in but not answer — that’s it, man, Buddy, I can no longer take in the mysteries. And I could do that a year ago, even when Meg was AWOL, out there somewhere, and the cops were coming to the door. I could still feel that delight — yeah, that’s the word — in the strangeness of reality. But that went away and with it my urge to stay involved with the present moment, and I have to add here, Buddy, that I have an unwillingness to look back, so I can’t even live in the past, not really, which would include some pretty traumatic shit — and you know what I mean — when we didn’t understand that Meg was going crazy, or was crazy, and before she was, as they said, diagnosed and treated.
Dear Grandpa,
I’m writing this first off, ahead of the fact, to say I’m sorry for whatever pain I’ve caused you. Please forgive me and know that I went out believing most, if not all, of what you taught me about God and about my place in the world and the importance, as you said again and again, of looking at the big, big picture, the one that goes forward in time and backwards and shows, or as you always said, the vastness of eternity in relation, as you said, to our small speck of lives. There are some things I’ve got to get down in this letter to let you know that I do remember. First off, I remember your elegance and the way you dressed — won’t force it in here, but I’ll describe a few things: the way you wore your hat, with your name and address and a note in the band that said, Reward if found. Return to Harold B. Allen. (I’ll spare you what you know.) The suits you bought in Chicago, and the time you took me and let me watch while the tailor chalked and measured and lifted the bolts of fabric out for me to finger, treating me, the tailor, like a man instead of a kid; also the cufflinks you wore along with the sock garters and the shoes. Anyway, your elegance and the house and the time you let me stay there, those days, when things at my house were too chaotic. I’ll spare you the narrative here. This note isn’t to explain why I’d end my life early. I realize that my desperation, my despair, will be linked directly to my tour of duty in Nam, of course, and also Meg’s death and the pain of all of that and the way Mom drinks and so on and so forth, but the truth is I’m simply not equipped for manhood as it is defined in this — I’ll spare you the rest [indecipherable scribble] … I should type this up because the writer’s cramp is killing me, but it seems wrong to type out a note like this on the same machine on which I wrote fiction. I’m slightly obsessive about your hats, to return to that subject. It seems to me that the covering of the head with an elegant object somehow is emblematic of your time and place in the world, and the fact that I’ve grown my hair long, too long to fit under the kind of hat you wear — although in theory it might work — should stand out as a major indication of the difference between your generation and mine, although I do, as I stand here, with a can of gas in my hand (or a gun, or whatever), have to admit that I side with your comment, and agree wholeheartedly, that the concept of generations is a creation of, as you say, the culture gone haywire, and that between your world and mine there is really only a slight, tweaky difference. I go out now because I can’t find a way [indiscernible scribbles] … foothold might be the right word. My body feels unable to relate to the gravitational pull. I thought of this when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon and I became obsessed with that footprint more than anything, the pattern on the sole, the boot prints, and then I began to wonder if maybe the world would be better if he had stepped onto the lunar surface in a pair of Florsheims (can’t think of a better brand), or better yet one of your handmade shoes, the ones with nails holding the sole. If he’d left a better print perhaps the whole Year of Hate thing, the riots and so forth … I won’t go there. Suffice it to say that a young man who can only come up with a lame little riff on the nature of moon footprints deserves, in some way, to stop existing. Or maybe I should say that a man who has to resort to a riff on footprints and then resorts to resorting to mention of that resorting as a lame excuse and then talks about his desire to end it all deserves to end it all? Anyway, I know you did your best with the draft board and pulled whatever strings you could and were in the uncomfortable position because of your former service.