Lisa Knopp until kingdom come. “I don’t like the man who did this to you,” she said. “I did this to myself,” you assured her. Your neck and nose healed, and you tried to put the whole ugly scene behind you. You and your son, along with Joyce and her boyfriend, cleaned out and closed down Gerald’s restaurant, a charming diner on the highway running through the heart of the city. Later, Darren and Joyce would sell it. It was the kind of place that served eggs, pancakes, biscuits and sausage gravy, hamburgers, hash browns, and pie, with little on the menu that you, a finicky, gluten-free vegetarian could eat. Even so, you were impressed by how well Gerald’s diner captured a white, middle-class, middle-America image of the 1950s, his favorite decade. While you and your son met with Joyce’s attorney friend at her office, two of Gerald’s creditors, rough, surly characters, burst into the diner demanding what he owed them. Joyce’s boyfriend said that one asked where he could find Gerald’s son. This alarmed you. Who had told them that Gerald had a son? If they saw your son, would they recognize him as Gerald’s, too? More than one of Gerald’s friends, upon seeing your son for the first time, had said, “You don’t need to tell me whose boy you are!” It was the blue, blue eyes, the thick eyebrows, the slightly upturned nose, the naturally straight, even teeth, and the stocky build. The attorney said that if there had been any money from Gerald’s estate, it should have gone to your son. But in his will, Gerald had revised the amount that he wanted to bequeath your son from $20,000 to $50,000, the edit written with a blue ballpoint pen in Gerald’s big, bold, blocky letters. Though you suspect that his intentions were good, you’re curious as to what prompted the change and whether he understood that under Kansas law, his edit effectively wrote your son out of the will. You brought your son to the former cow town on the Chisholm Trail not because there was money to be inherited, but because you had hoped that he’d come to understand something that had eluded him. What he got was the opportunity, over and over again, to proclaim himself as Gerald’s son to people who hadn’t known he existed, to perform the duties of next of kin (talking to the police; signing the death certificate and the cremation order), and to assume responsibility for Gerald’s remains. Darren said that Gerald wanted his ashes scattered on the family farm. When your son agreed to do this, Darren said to you, “You raised a good boy there.” Your heart swelled with love and pride. The farm Gerald wanted to return to in death was the setting of disturbing stories that he told about his childhood. He was tardy for school most days because his father wouldn’t let him leave until he’d fed and watered the cattle. Gerald didn’t mind doing morning chores. The other farm boys did them, too. But he considered it an expression of his father’s animosity toward him that he had to be so late for school every day. Often, Gerald’s father ordered his son to bend over and then kicked him hard enough that
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Crab Orchard Review