Real Reason

The real reason I skipped town was because I'm needed up north. My best friend/uncle, the one who likes to hang out with me, used to ride around with me listening to Jimi Hedrix pretending his car could fly is in trouble. He met his wife while on a drug binge in South East Asia. They moved back to the family farm out in the country where my family's from and there are more cows than people. They've had smart kids and an unhappy home life.

Now they're separated and he has moved out. He bought a big barn and no one knows where he lives anymore. My grandma speaks in hushed tones about how no one knows where he eats or where he sleeps anymore. I'm going to go and find out.

I imagine I'll have to wear a big pair of boots and go off some country high way. walk half a mile behind some frozen corn field till I find his barn. Big and falling apart with dry wood and sunlight coming through big cracks. He'll point out that there's a horse riding rink on the second floor, all I see is a fallen balcony. Then he starts to cry or something and I have to slap him and splash him with cold water. Then I help him find a razor and shave; then take him to a diner where we order two cups of strong coffee, eggs and hash browns with link sausage from a kind yet unobtrusive waitress. I have to be fierce and force him to eat (after shaving it is painful to see how sunken-in his cheek bones are) because he has been neglecting his body. I don't know where we go from there, but I know that is what family is for.