their last. The bean counters are stripping our newsrooms bare. TV anchors recruited at beauty contests and modeling agencies chase ratings like hounds in heat . . . The politico-media complex is as bad as anything Eisenhower warned us about. At least you made a clean deal. In exchange for burying one story, a whole corner of this impoverished state gets a new lease on life. Thousands of kids get a better education? That’s a fair trade, in my book.”
Dad stops speaking, his chest heaving from the effort of speech. He coughs from deep in his lungs, a ragged sound that finally trails off into a worrisome wheeze. I mean to sit quietly with him, but another confession rises unbidden from my heart.
“I did that one other time in my career,” I say softly. “I buried part of a story, betrayed my calling.”
“When?”
“My Pulitzer book. That night Paul saved me in Iraq . . . he killed some civilians. While escaping the house, we got trapped in an alley with a car blocking us in. A Honda Accord. Paul riddled it with bullets, and we scrambled over the top. It turned out there was a family inside.”
Dad looks out the window at Adam’s statue. “War’s full of horrors like that. You know that. What if Paul hadn’t fired?”
“We might not have made it. There could have been insurgents in that car. But that’s not my point. As we clambered over that Honda, I heard a child cry out from the backseat. A whimper, really. The parents were dead in the front, but this child had lived. I started to go back, but Paul jerked me to the ground. Seconds later, a heavy machine gun chewed the car to pieces.”
Dad looks back at me but says nothing. He knows more is coming.
“Four years later, when my son drowned, I couldn’t escape the feeling that his death was some kind of karmic payback for me not saving that Iraqi child. It may sound crazy, but I became certain of it. Obsessed with the idea. I’d let an innocent die, and my little boy had been taken as payment. A life for a life. The universe had balanced things out.”
My father looks into my eyes without pity. “You think you’ve been tormented by that for ten years. But you haven’t. You’ve been comforted by it.”
Anger flares in me. “Did you understand what I said?”
He nods solemnly. “Better than most. But you’re not looking hard enough at yourself. Believing your son’s death was a price exacted by fate, or karma, or God, lets you believe there was reason to it—meaning behind it, however hard to bear. The true horror is that you’re wrong. There’s no universal tally of good and evil, balancing right and wrong. The Christians with their God-has-a-plan fantasy, the Hindus with their karmic balance . . . it’s all wishful thinking. Primitive religious impulse. Linus’s damned security blanket.” My father’s eyes burn with hard-earned conviction. “The truth is infinitely simpler and harder to bear. Your son died because your wife had four glasses of wine instead of three. Adam died because you and he tried to swim that damned river down there when you were drunk and exhausted. No other reason.”
“Then why did you blame me for it?”
“Because it was your fault!” He shakes his head with what appears to be self-disgust. “But it was Adam’s, too. His more than yours, because he was older. Old enough to know better. But Adam was dead. You were still alive. That was your bad luck. I should have borne all the pain myself. I should have let you be a boy. But I wasn’t strong enough, Marshall. I’m so sorry for that.”
I never thought I would hear these words from him.
“After my first wife and child died,” he says, “I was lost. Searching for meaning, like you. But Adam’s death taught me the terrible truth. There’s no meaning to be found in tragedy. Only in our response to it. What we do matters, nothing else. That’s what kept me at the bottom of a bottle for fifty years. I wasn’t searching for an answer—I’d been given the answer. And I couldn’t handle it. It’s tough to look this life square in the face. The plight . . . the void. For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. That’s why your old man’s a drunk.”
“Ecclesiastes,” I whisper. “From my atheist father. All this time, I’ve figured you