1970

It’s like a light bulb flickering in a dark room.  Flash, I’m conscious.  Flash, all is black.

A big man is there in the cabin with the kid.  They are both talking fast and I think they’re talking about me and then there is darkness.

The man is wearing heavy glasses now and reading something.  He looks at me and raises the book.  “Your father’s diary.  From a summer about thirty years ago.  Interesting reading…”  The kid is lying in the corner.  He’s looking at me too but his eyes are blank holes and it is dark again.

The man has pulled a chair closer to the wood stove.  He must be Walker.  The diary is cradled in his lap.  He’s studying some odd looking tools — corroded steel.  “He used these to get you out.  Out of your mother.”  He snorts a little, sort of in an amazed way, sort of admiring too.  “He wrote it all down here. All of it! Even the recipe of the little cocktail he gave your mother.  It’s not a confession, it’s like notes, notes on a procedure he’s proud of.  He induced your early birth, way out here where they were all alone, no help for miles.  I don’t think he did it for a kick.  I think he did it to see if he could pull it off.  He writes something…here it is, ‘to rise to the moment and master it.'”

I’m thinking how my mother is dead and how I deserve all this pain but Walker is laughing.  “I want to meet this guy!”

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