The Old Man
“I called him Dad, or, on occasion, Father, until he was dead, and then a few weeks after his death, in casual conversations, mostly at dinner parties, telling the story of his death, I began to refer to him as my old man, saying things like: My old man wasn’t a bad guy, but I couldn’t see him, I mean really see the soul whom I called Father, until he was gone, and then it was too late.”
The Tree Line, Kansas, 1934
(Fiction) Five days of trading the field glasses and taking turns crawling back into the trees to smoke out of sight. Five days on surveillance, waiting to see if by some chance Carson might return to his uncle’s farm. Five days of listening to the young agent, named Barnes, as he recited verbatim from the file: Carson has a propensity to fire warning shots; it has been speculated that Carson’s limited vision in his left eye causes his shots to carry to the right of his intended target; impulse control somewhat limited. Five days of listening to Barnes recount the pattern of heists that began down the Texas Panhandle and proceeded north all the way up to Wisconsin, then back down to Kansas, until the trail tangled up in the fumbling ineptitude of the Bureau.