them were suffocated I haven’t been able to get that out of my mind, because Chuck could have been one of those boys. So I had you “tracked down,” as you put it in your letter. And for the same reason, I can’t leave you alone as you requested. At least not until the enclosed check comes back canceled with your endorsement on the back.
You’ll notice that it’s a considerably smaller check than the one you received about a month ago. I got in touch with the EMMC Accounts Department and paid your outstanding hospital bills with the balance of it. You’re free and clear that way, Johnny. That I could do, and I did it-with great pleasure, I might add.
You protest you can’t take the money. I say you can and you will. You will, Johnny. I traced you to Ft. Lauderdale, and if you leave there I will trace you to the next place you go, even if you decide on Nepal. Call me a louse who won’t let go if you want to; I see myself more as “the Hound of Heaven. ” I don’t want to hound you, Johnny. I remember you telling me that day not to sacrifice my son. I almost did And what about the others? Eighty-one dead, thirty more terribly maimed and burned. I think of Chuck saying maybe we could work out some kind of a story, spin a yarn or something, and me saying with all the righteousness of the totally stupid, “I won’t do that, Chuck. Don’t ask me. ” Well I could have done something. That’s what haunts me. I could have given that butcher Carrick $3,000 to pay off his help and shut down for the night. It would have come to about $37 a life. So believe me when I say I don’t want to hound you; I’m really too busy hounding myself to want to spare the time. I think I’ll be doing it for quite a few years to come. I’m paying up for refusing to believe anything I couldn’t touch with one of my five senses. And please don’t believe that paying the bills and tendering this check is just a sop to my conscience. Money can’t buy off the lightning, and it can’t buy an end to bad dreams, either. The money is for Chuck, although he knows nothing about it.
Take the check and I’ll leave you in peace. That’s the deal. Send it on to UNICEF, if you want, or give it to a home for orphan bloodhounds, or blow it all on the ponies. I don’t care. Just take it.
I’m sorry you felt you had to leave in such a hurry, but I believe I understand. We all hope to see you soon. Chuck leaves for Stovington Prep on September 4.
Johnny, take the check. Please.
All regards,
Roger Chatsworth
September 1, 1977
Dear Johnny,
Will you believe that I’m not going to let this go? Please. Take the check.
Regards,
Roger
September 10, 1977
Dear Johnny,
Charlie and I were both so glad to know where you are, and it was a relief to get a letter from you that sounded so natural and like yourself But there was one thing that bothered me very much, son. I called up Sam Weizak and read him that part of your letter about the increasing frequency of your headaches. He advises you to see a doctor, Johnny, without delay. He is afraid that a clot may have formed around the old scar tissue. So that worries me, and it worries Sam, too. You’ve never looked really healthy since you came out of the coma, Johnny, and when I last saw you in early June, I thought you looked very tired Sam didn’t say, but I know what he’d really like you to do is to catch a plane out of Phoenix and come on home and let him be the one to look at you. You certainly can’t plead poverty now!
Roger Chatsworth has called here twice, and I tell him what I can. I think he’s telling the truth when he says it isn’t conscience-money or a reward for saving his son’s life. I believe your mother would have said that the man is doing penance the only way he knows how. Anyway, you’ve taken it, and I hope you don’t mean it when you say you only did it to “get him off your back.” I believe you have too much grit in you to do anything for a reason like