Boy Interrupted

By Patrick King

Imagine you are five years old. You haven't started kindergarten, and your only knowledge of the outside world are those trips to the park where your nanny, Bella, lets you swing as high as you want and teeter-totter and jungle gym to your little heart's content. Or when your sweet mother shows up by surprise and spirits you away to the ice cream shop for your favorite cone—very berry strawberry cherry, thank you very much—or, better still, when she takes you to the movies for one of those fantastical adventures on that gigantic screen. Man, that Darth Vader is one scary dude! At home you are ensconced in the space they call your bedroom, but to you, it is the universe. You designed it, and in it you are the master of all. There, you line up your army of soldiers and battle the Pteranodon, while every stuffed critter under your watch spies it all from the edge of your bed. Your imagination is king, and all is well with the world, until one night… The assault had been brutal, pure physical torture. It had shocked you to the core, left you breathless and stunned. Witless. Took you weeks to recover. But that was only your body. Where does a five-year-old take such a thing? To whom do you speak? How do you even wrap your head around such cruelty? Such pain. Such betrayal. Daddy…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684562299

Patrick King

Patrick King is a social interaction specialist/dating, online dating, image, and communication and social skills coach based in San Francisco, California. His work has been featured on numerous national publications such as Inc.com, and he’s achieved status as a #1 Amazon best-selling dating and relationships author. He writes frequently on dating, love, sex, and relationships. Learn more about Patrick at his website, patrickkingconsulting.com.

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Chapter 1

Present day

Monday, November 8

3:40 p.m.

Jackson Middle School took up a sizable chunk of real estate on the northeast corner of Tillotson Avenue at Twenty-Sixth Street, and at 3:00 p.m. the back lot was buzzing with a hundred kids burning off the pent-up energy six hours stuck in the classroom had engendered.

Nicole Davis burst through the back exit and ran for the athletic field where she knew Josh would be waiting with the Frisbee. She high-fived the Hinkle twins—perched upside down on the jungle gym—intentionally ignoring the eighth-grade cheerleaders practicing their lame routines. Silly Barbie-dolls, she thought, with that peculiar, tomboy sense of superiority. She pushed through a gaggle of hoopers on the basketball court, snagged the ball from Eddy Speers, and sunk a perfect layup before darting off to meet Josh.

Nicole was in a dead heat when Josh tossed the Frisbee. His first snap flew over her head. She jumped for it, but the orange disk bounced off her mitten, just short of purchase.

What’s with the jacked-up high fly, McCoy? I’m not six feet tall. At least not this year.

The Frisbee landed in a small mound of leaves under the frog on a toadstool—one of a dozen such denizens in the concrete menagerie occupying the playground.

Check this out, she shouted, running hard and fast toward the frog.

Her plan was to kick the pile of leaves to smithereens and send the Frisbee back in the air without laying a finger on it, proving to any onlookers that Nicole Davis was a force to be reckoned with—the exact opposite of those silly pom-pom-twinkettes in their stupid little cheerleading outfits.

From Josh’s point of view, Nicole was the personification of Wiley the coyote tackling a haystack, oblivious to the fact that Roadrunner’s anvil was cleverly hidden beneath. She landed flat on her ass in a fugue of embarrassed confusion.

Josh shouted, And Manning fumbles on the second-yard line!

I’ve got your fumble, McCoy, she shouted back. Your turn to go fish.

With a practiced flick of her wrist, she shot the Frisbee hard, fast and low, a perfect arc, just over his head.

When Josh took off for it, Nicole retraced her steps to the toadstool, wondering what the hell had knocked her so unwittingly off balance.

At first, Nicole thought she was looking at a soccer ball, old and deflated now, weathered by exposure to weeks of sun and wind. Just a raggedy old gray thing, rotting under the pile of leaves. Boys are so immature, she thought. Why can’t they just put things back where they belong? She made a mental note to mention that fact to the coach, when it occurred to her that an empty rubber ball couldn’t have stubbed her up so badly. What was so heavy under there?

She moved in closer. That’s when the mucous-filled eye winked at her, its iris peeking from under a pasty, white film. That eye had been blue once. Maybe. She was paralyzed under its fixed, accusing stare, as if the thing were scolding her for some thoughtless transgression. Disturbing his rest, perhaps?

Where the other eye should have been, only a dark hole presented itself, filled with a wet, pussy gel—a sticky ooze that leaked from the corners like pregnant tears, only, not tears. More like gooey, resinous bug guts.

Definitely not a soccer ball.

Josh was unable to wrap his mind around that scream—a high-pitched squeal so freakish, so piercing, it felt like needles stabbing his eardrums. He’d never heard her make a sound like that. He and Nicole had shared every Night of the Living Dead, Friday the 13th, and Halloween film ever produced, and he was intimately familiar with the range of her vocal cords. But this was different.

He tried to move, but his legs were like fence posts anchored in concrete. The pee in his boxers only confirmed the fact that he did not want to know what had made her scream like that.

Other kids had abandoned their games and began circling Nicole. The gaggle grew into a crowd, the commotion louder, as parents settled back into parking spaces and got out of their cars. Now and then, a new scream ripped through the air. One of the Hinkle twins added projectile vomit to the mix, his double now on his knees, barfing in empathy as identical twins often do.

The boys shooting hoops had fled the basketball court, protectively wrangling the cheerleaders as they approached the source of all the hubbub. By the time Josh’s legs allowed him to move, the schoolyard was a-sea in a wave of blue and red strobe-light and police uniforms.

Chapter 2

6:12 p.m.

Disturbed individual was not the phrase Detective Susan Harwood had jotted into her casebook, even though the medical examiner had mouthed those two words more than once during his initial assessment of the corpse.

Sick fucking puppy was her term. Eyeing the bits and pieces of what had once been a living human being, Susan tried to imagine who in this town—this quaint little throwback to a more innocent and hospitable place in time—was capable of such a brutal and sadistic act. Not one individual on the city’s current roster of thugs, goons, and misfits came even close. The psychotic rage of the monster who’d perpetrated this madness was beyond her scope.

By the time Susan had arrived, two EMS units, the county medical examiner, three crime scene techs (Muncie is not a big city), and her lieutenant were deep into analysis. She lived five minutes from the playground by car, but the shift in mind-set had been radical. How do you switch off a Colts football game and wrap your head around this lunacy in five lousy minutes? Tonight was supposed to be the christening of her brand-new 3-D sixty-inch flat-screen, and sharing the game with her best friend Brian. The twelve-pack of Saint Pauli Girl beckoned as she approached the crime scene.

Lieutenant Carter had taped off a twenty-foot-square surrounding the corpse. The CS techs were absorbed in photography and trace evidence, while the ME recorded preliminary findings. Two of the beat cops—Jimmy Link and Mac Denton—worked crowd control while their colleagues—Steve Croner and Connie Lyman—canvassed for witnesses. The curiosity seekers who couldn’t tear their eyes from the grizzly scene pissed her off. The more blood and guts, it seemed, the bigger the crowd.

Susan had witnessed her share of mischief among the animals after nine years on the force, but this was new territory. Murder was rare enough in her little town, usually the result of some stupid domestic squabble gone awry—too much alcohol, dope, or testosterone on the loose—but this Freddy Krieger slice-and-dice extravaganza had rocked her world.

Her lead CSI Danny Brown said, Some wicked shit, eh, Suze?

He was dislodging a nail that had been punched through a flap of skin peeled from the victim’s face. The flesh had been drawn and quartered, then sectioned off in four pieces, each pinned to the ground in separate flaps. The extracted eye had been nailed to one of the flaps, sandwiching that piece of skin between the lawn and the deflated eyeball. Oeuf en peau, she’d thought absurdly, hors d’oeuvres for the insane. The other eye stared from its socket, floating in mucous and congealed body fluids.

Where’s the blood? she asked, stifling the urge to hurl.

Judging from the lack of it, I’d wager this is only a dump site, but that’s Jack’s call.

Is he close to calling it?

Couldn’t say, but look at this.

A white coverlet had been laid over the corpse. He pulled it down to the dead man’s navel. ME’s estimating time of death around twelve hours ago, based on rigor, but without a liver, well, you know the routine.

Susan peered into the hollow cavity. Jesus…

I know. Our little artist is a real piece of work…

Where’s the rest of the body?

You tell me. Carter’s people are searching the school grounds and park. Deputies are combing adjacent buildings and alleys, but nothing so far. Looks like our wack job wanted us to find this much and kept the rest for himself.

Lovely, she said. What did he keep?

"You name it. No trace of the heart or lungs. Kidneys, spleen, stomach, and liver are all missing as well as the upper and lower GI material. All the mesentery.

"Basically, the insides are gone. He kept those.

And he was thorough, mind you, even extracted the rib cage, leaving only the spinal column. I guess he wanted to maintain the general shape of a man. Then the freak hacks off both arms and legs.

Any clue as to the whys and wherefores?

All I can say is this psycho is no virgin. Notice how clean the incisions, the precise rib cuts, like he was presenting a rack of lamb for a formal dinner party. Or should I say—rack of man?

Susan rolled her eyes. Droll, Danny. Very droll.

You’ll have to get specifics from the ME, but I can tell you we’re not dealing with some pissed-off boyfriend or husband. I’ve never seen such focused rage. Such clean, meticulous carving. It gives me the creeps.

Susan saw that the victim’s midsection had been cut and peeled in like fashion. A vertical incision ran from the throat all the way down to the pelvis, between which, four equally spaced horizontal incisions had been cut: six exact sections, stripped away and tacked to the ground.

Ready for the pièce de résistance?

Christ, she said. It gets worse?

"I could just show you the photography later, if you don’t want to look. I wouldn’t blame you. I mean, it’s totally gross. Silence of the Lambs gross if you know what I mean."

She braced herself. Go ahead. I’ll deal with it.

He rolled off the coverlet. She glanced furtively right to left, making sure there were no children or soccer moms still lingering about. Nightmares were one thing, but this little excerpt from the annals of human depravity could ruin a kid’s dreamscape for life.

At which point, the element of surprise came into full play. That which her eyes expected to see, what her brain told her she should be looking at, simply did not exist. Where legs should have been, two cauterized stumps were all that remained. Where the basic anatomy of the male of the species should have revealed simple gonads—and this is the part that finally induced the regurgitation of her stomach contents—there appeared…a work of art.

An abstract absurdity that reminded Susan of a particularly badly conceived sculpture she’d had the bad luck to observe at the Desrati gallery in Chicago, one of those trendy and absurdly expensive fine arts establishments where the line between art and pornography had been the subject of much debate.

No penis. Instead, lying in peaceful repose, palms up and positioned inches below the missing groin, lay a pair of severed hands, one overlapping the other, and crossed diagonally, in some grotesque stance of supplication.

An entreaty? An askance for forgiveness? An offering?

Each digit had been cut off two inches below the nail, so that ten bloody stumps pointed up, awaiting their sticky tickle for whomever dared to take the prize. Indeed, there was an offering. It rested dead center of the upper palm, between life line and heart line. A shiny black rectangular object that glinted minute flecks of the surrounding light, approximately two inches long by half an inch wide.

When her gag reflex abated, Susan sleeve-wiped her lips, said, Is that what I think it is?

With a pair of tweezers, Danny carefully plucked the gadget from its grisly corral, mindful not to disturb any fingerprints or possible DNA evidence. He dropped it into an evidence bag and held it under the light. Yup—Kingston Data Traveler.

Flash drive.

Two gigs. Says so right on the label.

Her heart skipped a beat as she contemplated possibilities. Had this pervert actually recorded the deed? Produced a little snuff film for the entertainment and edification of the local constabulary? Perhaps a confession, or maybe a verbal account of the insane rationale behind his activities. Or even better, a documentation of the sick bastard’s suicide.

Her trained police rationale told her to rein in those thoughts. A modest amount of hopeful conjecture was harmless at this point, but she knew better than putting too many eggs in the old basket of imagination. Besides, whatever secrets—if any—that disc contained, she’d know soon enough.

When can I see it, Danny?

Chain of evidence, love, you know the rules. I’ll have everything bagged, tagged, and logged in about an hour. After that, you can follow me downtown if you want, but the ME decides who sees what and when. You might want to consider skipping it altogether and come back in the morning.

As if that were an option, she said. Susan knew full well the entire department was in a state of frenzy. No one was going home tonight.

So much for Monday night football, she thought.

The tension in Carter’s expression was palpable. His brow was a mass of deep furrows. Shit would only get worse after the press in Indy got wind of this mess, and once the big boys in Chicago stormed into town, Lieutenant Nathan Emil Carter’s pain-in-the-ass headache will have blown into a full migraine.

Who’s got the ME rotation tonight? she asked Danny.

Jack Pulliam. And just beware, love, he’s a stickler even under normal circumstances, and this is hardly what you’d call a normal situation, so take heed.

Got it, Danny, she said. And thanks, you’re a peach. I’ll see you and the gang downtown. Later.

Her cruiser was parked on the basketball court where she’d left it, blue lights still beating out their ominous, warning strobe.

Later, Suze—Jesus, fuck!

Danny had fallen off his haunches, ass on the ground.

What? What is it?

I know this guy…

She watched as he regained his legs, manipulated the extricated skin over the skull, holding it in place. The pallor of shocked recognition covered his face.

I’ll be damned, he said.

What?

"It’s Kessler. Dr. Wesley Kessler. He’s a kid doctor at First Pediatrics on Madison Street. Christ, my sister’s gonna freak. Kessler’s my nephew’s pediatrician. Was."

Even as he’d said the name, Susan felt the hackles rise on the back of her neck. The flashback was instant, a clean, vivid snap to that nasty little room in that horrible clinic when she was twelve years old.

What’s wrong? Danny asked. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.

He let go of the skin. Kessler’s face returned to an amorphous flesh pile on the lawn. He tagged a forty-gallon bag, unzipped it, and began working the dead doctor’s torso into the plastic.

Susan’s crazy nostalgia kicked in like a shock wave. It made her shiver. Nothing, she lied. It’s just that I used to go that clinic when I was a kid.

So?

The ghosts were screaming now. Her memory was alive, rife with smells: alcohol, antiseptic, baby shit, bad breath. At that point, she made a mental decision to let sleeping dogs lie and shook it out of her head.

Never mind, she said. That place just gave me the creeps is all. You finished here?

Not long, he said. Man, this is bad. What’s the point of all this overkill? It’s stupid if you ask me. You wanna kill the guy, all right, kill him. Isn’t that enough? What’s the point of gutting him, ripping him to shreds, then running off with the parts? All this theatrical bullshit?

He zipped the bag, gathered his tools, unable to resist baiting his boss one last time before she left.

But that, my wise and reigning queen of sleuth, is exactly what you’re going to reveal to us mindless morons when you’ve got the goods, right, Susie Q?

You bet your ass I will, she said. Bet your wise and nerdy ass on it.

But she wondered. This was no horror flick at the local Cineplex from which she could simply get up and walk out when the screen had insulted her sensibilities. She was stuck in this one sure as the imprint on her badge. To say she was out of her comfort zone—way out—was gross understatement. Not because the level of butchery was off the charts, which it was, nor because she’d never encountered such madness, which she hadn’t. The underlying fact that pissed her off more than anything else was the blatant insult to humanity. The uncaring, heartless, cold-blooded, and callous disregard for life in general.

Susan B. Harwood (B for Beulah—God bless Mother dearest) was the quintessential Munsonian and proud of it. She’d been born, raised, and educated right here in this quirky little city, and no one grasped its inner workings, worldview, or overall mind-set better than she. She got the idiosyncratic psycho sphere of its denizens. She got their uniquely small-town peculiarities, their tendency to stifle change and distrust outsiders (especially that bunch of college brats out at that Ball State den of iniquity). She got all of it, and all of it was part and parcel of her day-to-day approach to law enforcement here.

Except for a three-year stint in the Army after high school, a summer on the byways of Spain, France, and Germany via Europass and youth hostel after college, and an occasional jaunt to Chicago or New York whenever the need for theater or fine art tickled her fancy, she’d never left. Not really. Like some homing instinct that beckons the avian to its birthplace in the spring, her connection to this city was no less compelling, profound, or permanent.

Yet in Susan’s way of thinking, these mandates amounted to nothing more than the simple trappings of home, hearth, and family.

Her people. Her town.

She realized it was naive to think the department could keep tabs on each and every citizen—a population whose number increased or decreased by eighteen to twenty thousand every spring or fall with the university’s yearly ebb and flow. And while her group of friends, colleagues, and chums spanned an impressive cross section of the local populace, she was no wizard, and neither she nor any combination of those friends, colleagues, and chums could possibly track the movements of every single citizen.

But that was neither the point nor the goal.

What set this little city apart from the LAs, Chicagos, and New York Cities of the world had nothing to do with size or sophistication. It was the attitude, an esprit de corps that doesn’t exist in the big-city world of smart phones, social media, and middle school shoot-outs.

An unwritten, yet tangible code of civility prevailed in this little berg. It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, black or white, Jew or Gentile.

Gay or straight for that matter.

Whatever.

One’s basic sense of well-being among the others was simply understood, taken for granted.

Assumed.

Susan took great pride in that enduring tradition.

So who in God’s name was this freak of nature? This pervert among perverts? What possible motivation stirred this particular monster into action?

Madness to be sure. Anger? Psychotic rage? Without a doubt. But those were merely words, adjectives. Susan wanted—needed—to know what defined him specifically. What were his earmarks? Who were his family, his friends? Where did he come from?

She was certain the horror show at hand was not the product of anything local.

Granted, her vision of what it had meant to live in small-town America had abated over the years—no longer the quintessential embodiment of, say, a Norman Rockwell painting on the cover of Saturday Evening Post. Those days were long gone, and she understood full well that her little town was no less subject to the effects of a flailing economy, low wages, rising unemployment, bankruptcy, and desperation than the rest of the world.

But this?

She’d almost convinced herself that her perp was a minion of hell itself, spawn of the dark lord. That would explain things, wouldn’t it?

The sad reality was, like herself, this freak of nature was no more or less than just another human being, and as such, subject to all the genetic and environmental muck and mire from which each of us is cast—be that a common man, genius, or madman. He simply fell into the latter category.

Perhaps some Chicago-bred insult to humanity hitchhiked down by way of Interstate 65, stumbled into town by accident. Big-city scum, born of big-city shit.

Psychosis, she understood, wasn’t the sole provenance of a big city, but let’s face it, folks, she thought, when you cram 2.7 million people into a chunk of real estate the size of the Windy City, the margin for error increases exponentially.

Her gaze returned to the plastic bags, the severed hands. In her heart of hearts, Susan hoped that Dr. Kessler had been dead long before big-city scum (or whoever) had cut off his fingers, dissected his face, severed his limbs, then gutted him. God only knew what else, but that was only wishful thinking on her part. Small-town cop thinking no doubt.

Chapter 3

Brian

Brian Ryder was a man of many talents. The list of hats he’d worn during the short thirty-eight years of his life included photographer, writer, bellman, busboy, bartender, paperboy, grill cook, anthropologist, sociologist, historian, and teacher, among others. Brian Ryder was a firm believer in the concept that there is dignity in all work.

Brian’s term for the eventual mind-set of a guy who’d spent a good chunk of his life on the road—and off—searching for his destined path in life, was Renaissance man. His father’s moniker for that guy was jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

Potato, potahto.

Brian was nineteen years old when his first attack of wanderlust had struck him like a ton of bricks. He’d dropped out of college, joined the Peace Corps, and spent a year in the Republic of Haiti. There, under the wing of the World Health Organization, he’d melded into the thin sliver of aid givers who did what they could to enhance the lives of those lost, impoverished souls on that beautiful little speck in the Caribbean.

Turned out, college hadn’t been a total waste after all. Those second-, third-, and fourth-quarter French classes had turned into a useful tool, once he’d gotten his head around the peculiar dialect of the natives. Patois—the odd mix of English and French that had become the spoken language—was a far cry from the Parisian dialect they’d taught at the university, but after a few months of sinking his teeth into the culture and its vernacular, he was speaking like a native. Saving the world notwithstanding, it was in that quirky tropical world that his love for the photograph evolved into a passion.

Not unlike the millions of photo-snapping tourists before him, Brian had become enamored by the unnatural contrast between the poverty-stricken masses living in Quonset huts, cardboard boxes, or any self-designed hovel providing protection from the elements—abject poverty at its worst—while the landscape surrounding these miserable conditions was nothing short of the Garden of Eden. Unbelievably beautiful beaches, blue seas, forests ripe with greenery and fruit, and mountains so high and majestic—Brian’s words—the contrast was powerful—intoxicating.

When his tour came to an end, Brian’s dalliance with the Nikon 35 followed him back to the Hoosier state, where his oldest and dearest friend, Susan Harwood, told him he was full of shit. Her words.

"If you’re serious about photography, get off your ass and do something. Set up shop. Make portraits. Do weddings. Enter contests in the Star Press. Whatever. Stop blabbing about the good old days in Haiti and make it real. Do something!"

Susan’s daggers compelled him to act, eventually. A one-year course at the Photo-Media Institute in Indianapolis proved once again that academia was not his strong suit. Two months into the program he’d dropped out, told himself, screw school. If the camera’s my destiny, I’ll do it on my own.

He’d set up camp at the old homestead on Penn Street in Heekin Park—his dad’s house—with every intention of promoting his big new career. He’d seriously believed that home alone, free of rent, stress, and the autonomy those nonobligations afforded him, he would strategize his plan.

When days turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into desperation, he’d taken a gig shooting children’s portraits at the local K-Mart.

At first, it was fun, even amusing, framing those colicky little bastards as they clung to their baby doll heroes: Barney, Sponge Bob, Nemo, Buzz Lightyear, the Little Mermaid, the Lion King…

Tangled.

How sweet. How innocent. How fricking Disney Pixar. Corporate America had once again mastered the market, and these little tykes had bought the hype, hook, line, and sinker.

Bored shitless, a little depressed, and majorly pissed off, Brian flew the coop. The skid marks he’d left in the parking lot as he’d fled the scene of his first gig as a real-life photographer aroused the attention of no one, save the street cleaner two days later, who had to scrub twice to remove the rubber.

Back at his dad’s house, Brian hadn’t noticed he was operating on autopilot. In a frenetic whirl, he’d tossed everything in his room into garbage bags, tagged them Good Will, and left them on the hallway for Dad to dispose of.

He’d loaded his camera, stuffed a backpack, dropped his Ray-Bans into his shirt pocket, and headed for the door.

On the threshold of his leap into the wild blue yonder, his father appeared at the door. A word before you go, son.

Brian steeled himself.

I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Ryder said. Another pain-in-the-ass sermon from the pain-in-the-ass old man. Judgment at the cheapest rate in town, I know.

Dad…

Just listen.

Dad’s nervousness hadn’t escaped Brian’s keen sense of observance, the way he tugged at his belt, adjusted his shirttail, shuffled back and forth as he scratched his forehead.

Very unlike the old man.

When at last Mr. Ryder had found his tongue, he said, I admit it, son, and I’m sorry.

What are you talking about, Dad?

I’ve done nothing but badger you, bully, and criticize. I realize now that this is too little, too late, so call me a slow learner, but I’m telling you now that all that claptrap was a crock of baloney, nothing but cheap affectation. Crap, meaning nothing. And certainly no expression of a father’s love for his kid.

Dad…

No. Hear me out.

He placed his hands on Brian’s shoulders, then backed away sheepishly.

You’re my son, Brian. I love you. I know I don’t say it often—hell, I can’t remember the last time I said it all—but I need you to know, so I’m telling you. I love you and I’m proud of you. I’ve always been. And as corny and lame as this must sound to you now, all I ever wanted is for you is to be happy.

Dad…

Be quiet and let me get this out.

Brian squirmed in his Reeboks, unaccustomed to this level of sentiment from his father. It wasn’t his style. Brian was spellbound.

"All I’ve been doing these past months is repeating my own father’s nonsense, and I’m telling you now it was a load of crap.

I’ve been trying to handle you, mold you. You are no more Dickens’s Pip or Brontë’s Heathcliff than I am. My stupid attempts at orchestrating your salvation were nothing but a piss-poor attempt at fathering. Where do I get off beating you down instead of talking to you? As if hurling digs and insults, or barking platitudes would solve anything. You’re an intelligent man and absolutely undeserving of those tactics…and I apologize.

Dad…

That kamikaze approach is the exact crap my old man fed to me when I was your age, and I can’t tell you how much I came to resent him for it. It made me hate him. Don’t get me wrong, Bri, you know I loved your granddad, but the man could be a genuine horse’s ass, and boy, have I done him proud.

Please, Dad.

"Quiet! I’m almost finished. Your mother and I swore before you were born that we would never raise our children in that abject state of Gestapo machine that my father chose to raise his. She saw how crazy it made your Uncle Phillip, and it maddened her. She would have cut the old man out of our lives completely had he not been family. Her belief that family is the one sacrosanct common denominator in life softened her, allowed him access.

"Her approach to bringing a kid into this world was predicated on the promise of mutual respect, intelligent guidance, and most important of all, love.

"And I agreed with her to the fullest. After cancer took her from us—and I’m ashamed to admit it—I somehow reverted back to my old man’s ways. Your mother would roll in her grave if she saw the way I’ve behaved.

You were her joy in life, Brian. Ours. And now you’re mine. I know I’ve been an utter ass these past months, and I’m sorry. So sorry. Can you find a way in your heart to forgive me? Give me another chance? Let me try again?

Brian hadn’t seen that coming. He was bewildered, embarrassed, and completely at a loss for what to say. When his momentary paralysis gave into the spring of emotions welling up inside, he’d simply stepped into his father’s arms and hugged him.

Before either man allowed the other see his tears, Brian said, I really don’t pay that much attention to your bullshit, Dad.

They were still laughing when Mr. Ryder regained composure, stepped away.

I understand your need to flee, son, and believe me, I get it. Get as far away from this house and this idiotic trap—me—as you possibly can. I’m surprised you lasted this long.

Brian hadn’t felt this close to his father since the day his mother’s embalmed corpse had been laid out in a casket at Meek’s Mortuary six years before. That was the last time they’d cried together, shared a connection.

Now, even as the warm fuzzies overwhelmed him—palpable, clear, and painfully obvious evidence that his father loved him without condition, price, or limitation—none of it altered the fact that the time to leave had arrived, and nothing could stop it.

He didn’t want to leave the old man with nothing, but how could he possibly explain? How does one explain a void in his soul? How does one explain the stinging murmur that some unturned stone, some life-affirming factor or knowledge was yet to be discovered? How does one explain that the only way to unfold this knowledge was to get the hell out in the world and find it?

At length, he said, Are you okay with this?

His father smiled. The look on his face was peaceful, accepting. The look of love. Go. I’ll be here when you find your way home. Just be careful, son.

That was August in the year 2000—the Kerouac year, he would later refer to it affectionately—though Midwestern Hayride was closer to the truth of it. During that sojourn, he will have walked, thumbed, flown, or Greyhound-bussed his way through many a nook and cranny of the great American heartland.

With the dawn of each new day, whether the tiniest berg in rural Wisconsin or the urban sprawls of Chicago, Indianapolis or Saint Louis, each was an unpredictable bag of surprises, loaded with ever-changing sights, sounds, and drama, and Brian took it all in with the joy of a kid under a Christmas tree on December 25.

He’d camped, hung out, and otherwise consorted with the coolest people—and a few who were pretty damned uncool—never knowing where one day would end or the next begin. And he could have cared less. The who, what, when, where, and how of his days had lost all meaning, were no longer the point. In the realm of the here and now, those concerns were nothing but peripheral noise. In the realm of the here and now, the only thing that mattered was this moment, right here, right now.

That and the current object in his viewfinder.

He’d laughed at himself for the corniness of that tired old cliché, but he was living it loud and embraced the beauty without question.

One day, a newborn fawn suckling its mother’s milk (creek side, Newton Lake State Park, Illinois), the next, a drunken derelict sucking rotgut wine from a greasy bottle in some backstreet slum in Cincinnati.

So that the collection his father had started after Brian had sent home the first batch grew into volumes.

He’d become an expert in the world of temporary employment and would later tell Susan that whether grilling a Whopper at Burger King or french frying potatoes to a state of perfection at McDonald’s, each was an art unto itself.

He’d picked up some Spanish in those fast-food kitchens and improved his skill on a farm co-op on the outskirts of Seymour, Indiana, where he’d picked a million tomatoes by hand, alongside scores of migrant workers—mostly illegal Mexicans with whom he’d eaten, drank, and slept in dismal, scantily furnished labor camp huts.

Those photos were among his most beloved. His favorite was the twenty-four-by-thirty-six sepia-tone hanging on his living room wall today: Pete and Marianna Delgado, their kids, Alejandro and Lucia, the family moment freeze-framed in the act of packing the fat red veggies into cartons, while Brian posed impatiently in the background, awaiting the auto-timer on his shutter.

A drunken scrap at a biker bar in Lexington, Kentucky (the Skull, it was called), had ended with an eight-inch bowie knife ripping a gash in Brian’s left bicep. Not that he’d insulted the mother of the wrong redneck or committed some other breach of etiquette at the local hootenanny. He was simply standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when the one-eyed sasquatch swung at the guy standing next to Brian.

The wound was far from fatal—a shallow nick, scoring a two-inch flesh wound requiring a meager twelve stitches—but the tale of the bar and the scar and those badass bikers was a sweet addition to the growing pool of anecdotes he was collecting.

Although his path on this journey had crossed the line between urban and rural many times, the biker incident had renewed his need to flee the species and commune with nature.

Perusing his map of the state of Kentucky, a tiny dot in the northeastern quadrant—Bremen Holler—had spoken to him in some strange, compelling urge to go there. (Resonated?) It seemed to call his name out loud, a spiritual beckoning he could neither define nor ignore. Once again, the corniness of that notion made him laugh out loud, but Bremen Holler was his next pit stop sure as his name was Brian Ryder.

He found a clean old-fashioned village, beautiful, free of pollution, and completely devoid of any trace of the muck and mire of the city. Its residents were somewhat cool to the outsider, but communicative. Nestled in a mound of hills that rose up like emerald wigwams among the taller, grassless spires of its canyon brothers, Bremen Holler was a stunning, unexpected jewel.

Even from the parking lot of that homey family-owned general store, the view was idyllic. The pristine, untouched greenness of it all touched Brian in that special place in his heart that beckoned him to record it for posterity. (Dad). All that remained was a direction, a course.

As if placed there for his personal edification, fifty feet east of the parking lot macadam, he saw the sign:

HIGH ROCK SUMMIT—3.5 MILES

STAY ON TRAIL!

Painted in bright yellow letters on a wooden slat, courtesy of the State of Kentucky Park Association, that sign was