Now this is very hard for me to say, but I will do the best I can. Please come home, Johnny. The publicity has died down again—I can hear you saying, “Oh bullshit, it will never die down again, not after this” and I suppose you are right in a way, but you are also wrong. Over the phone Mr. Chatsworth said, “If you talk to him, try to make him understand that no psychic except Nostradamus has ever been much more than a nine-days’ wonder.” I worry about you a lot, son. I worry about you blaming yourself for the dead instead of blessing yourself for the living, the ones you saved, the ones that were at the Chatsworths’ house that night. I worry and I miss you, too. “I miss you like the dickens, as your grandmother used to say. So please come home as soon as you can.
Dad
P.S. I’m sending the clippings about the fire and about your part in it. Charlie collected them up. As you will see, you were correct in guessing that “everyone who was at that lawn party will spill their guts to the papers. ” I suppose these clippings may just upset you more, and if they do, just toss them away. But Charlie’s idea was that you may look at them and say, “That wasn’t as bad as I thought, I can face that ” hope it turns out that way.
Dad
September 29, 1977
Dear Johnny,
I got your address from my dad How is the great American desert Seen any redskins (ha-ha)? Well here I am at Stovington Prep. This place isn’t so tough. I am taking sixteen hours of credit Advanced chemistry is my favorite although it’s really something of a tit after the course at DHS. I always had the feeling that our teacher there, old Fearless Farnham, would really have been more happy making doomsday weapons and blowing up the world. In English we are reading three things by J. D. Salinger this first four weeks, Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters. I like him a lot. Our teacher told us he still lives over in N.H. but has given up writing. That blows my mind Why would someone just give up when they are going great guns? Oh well. The football team here really sucks but I’m learning to like soccer. The coach says soccer is football for smart people and football is football for assholes. I can’t figure out yet if he’s right or just jealous.
I’m wondering if it would be ok to give out your address to some people who were at our party graduation night. They want to write and say thanks. One of them is Patty Strachan’s mother, you will remember her, the one that made such a pisshead of herself when her “precious daughter” fainted at the lawn party that afternoon. She now figures that you’re an ok person. I’m not going with Patty anymore, by the way. I’m not much on long-distance courtships at my “tender age” (ha-ha), and Patty is going to Vassar, as you might have expected. I’ve met a foxy little chick right here.
Well, write when you can, my man. My dad made it sound like you were really “bummed out” for what reason I do not know since it seems to me that you did everything you could to make things turn out right. He’s wrong, isn’t he, Johnny? You’re really not bummed out, are you? Please write and tell me you are ok, I worry about you. That’s a laugh, isn’t it, the original Alfred E. Neuman worried about you, but I am.
When you write, tell me why Holden Caulfield always has to have the blues so much when he isn’t even black.
Chuck
P.S. The foxy chick’s name is Stephanie Wyman, and I have already turned her on to Something Wicked This Way Comes. She also likes a punk-rock group called The Ramones, you should hear them, they are hilarious.
C
October 17, 1977
Dear Johnny,
Okay that’s better, you sound ok. Laughed my ass off about your job with the Phoenix Public Works Dept. I have no sympathy at all for your sunburn after four outings as a Stovington Tiger. Coach is right, I guess, football is football for assholes, at least at this place. Our record is 1—3 and in the game we won I scored three touchdowns, hyperventilated my stupid self and blacked out. Scared Steff into a tizzy (ha-ha).