| I am that we reconnected last year. But I just want to take a moment to say thank you for everything you are and everything you have done for me… I look up to a few people. You are one of them. I know you aren’t perfect, but I really do aspire to be at least half the man you are. Keep doing your thing! If you ever need anything, I don’t have much, but it’s yours. Best, Elijah If I had understood then what I understood by the time Riley called, I would have told him not to do that, or at least made sure he understood what the whole man looked like. How cracked up it was, how okay it was to be cracked up. I am not God so will not say it would have changed a thing. All I know is that Elijah was the bravest boy I ever met, and he deserved a better world, a better path, than the one he was given. The one that I helped give to him. I drove him, drove them all, to be first, be bold, be perfect—be the greatest. What I did not do was drive them to be whole, to be free. Did not teach them that the best revenge was freedom. Did not know it for myself, in time. Elijah’s memorial was the following week, in Saint Louis. I was already scheduled to be in Norway, to give some speech. Couldn’t cancel, or didn’t |
lush Ohio field with a sprinkle of leaves at their feet, and trees, some dying, towering behind them, a small red barn with white lattice beside them. The man, the father, tall like those trees, brown like the bark, is smiling. His mustache wraps around his wide mouth, big teeth. His head is square and strong and on straight, his hair low and wavy. His white shirt and light blue jeans are starched. His hands are larger than most men’s hands, better than most men’s hands at certain things, which is why they made him famous for some years, some years ago. He clasps these hands around a little girl, eight or nine years old: the daughter. They seem to shield her heart, also covered by a thick black sweater with many colored patches. She looks like she’s got good home training: stands at attention, arms at her sides, feet together, no space between the knees. A portrait-perfect smile, cheeks shiny and plump and bronze. There is a thin white ribbon in her black hair—a ribbon likely tied and hair likely pressed by the woman in the portrait: the mother, who stands by the man. Their elbows touch. She holds her head highest of all. She has the biggest smile of all, red lipstick. She has the biggest hair of all—burnt blonde, parted on the right side, billowing out and down in curls, falling on the shoulders of her white lace blouse. She wears no rings. She rests |
