scholarship. Scouts from all over the country had come to Adelia to watch him play. He could have punched his higher education ticket to just about anywhere. He’d selected Vanderbilt for reasons that still eluded him, and he’d played ball for just a year. He knew in high school that he would not play baseball for a living; his heart just wasn’t in it. It was in writing, which became his major after a single misguided semester in anthropology. He’d devoured the courses on literary studies, creative writing, and specialized critical studies. His first novel was published while he was in his third year.
From the beginning, there were those who suspected that much of CJ’s work was autobiographical. There were others who suspected it wasn’t quite as good as most everyone else seemed to think it was. CJ thought that both suspicions might or might not have been right; it depended on the day.
He guided the Honda onto I-40, his detour off the interstate to navigate West End so that he could drive by his alma mater now finished. He liked to do that every now and then; he’d experienced the refining of his writing skills in this institution, and it always energized him to pass by, even if he was now almost twice as old as many of the freshmen.
His detour had something of the delaying tactic in it as well. He hadn’t been back to Adelia since 1993. He’d been close—as near as Albany in support of one book or another. He wondered what it would be like after all this time, even as he suspected that it would be just as he’d left it. It wouldn’t have surprised him to discover that, aside from the prisons, not a single new structure had been built. Adelia was that kind of place.
Thoreau was in the passenger seat, watching out the window, eyes tracking anything that moved. He’d whined once when they passed Centennial Park, and CJ had scratched behind his ears until West End fed into Broadway. He didn’t have any idea how much trouble he would get into for stealing his own dog. For what he was paying his lawyer, CJ thought he should have been able to commit a murder in broad daylight and walk away a free man.
Janet had called twice while he packed the few things he would take to Adelia. He’d let the machine pick up both times, feeling pleased with himself when he heard the anger in her voice. The only thing that had given him a moment’s pause was when she’d told him she was going to call the police. He’d wondered how a cop would assess the act of breaking into one’s own home. It was, after all, still his house, and he and Janet were not officially separated. It was a somewhat muddied issue, and so he decided the most logical course of action was to not worry about it. Anyway, he and Thor were leaving town, and would be beyond reach of local law enforcement. He did wonder what Pastor Stan would say, but suspected that even a minister would give due consideration to extenuating circumstances.
New York was a more imminent concern for CJ. For all that he had written about it, the prospect of returning to it in physical, rather than literary, form tied his stomach in knots. After seventeen years, even family can become like strangers.
Seventeen years. It was a long time no matter how one parsed it. Four years of college, thirteen years of marriage, seven novels of varying quality, one literary award, two short stories in The New Yorker, and one dog. A lot of water under the bridge. He was tempted to ignore the summons to attend his grandfather’s funeral. Sal wouldn’t know if he showed up or not. As was so often mentioned, funerals were for those left behind. And CJ was not close to a single one of these orphans of truncated lineage. He’d missed other deaths, along with births, marriages, family reunions, and his brother’s swearing-in ceremony for his state senate seat. He wondered why this should be any different. Why couldn’t he stay in Tennessee and send a card and flowers across the miles?
It was a question he couldn’t answer, except to suspect that his father’s call had caught him in a vulnerable spot. The dissolution of his marriage, the destruction of his reputation with the literary community, the situation with his dog—all were good reasons to decide to do