Interstate Read Online Free PDF Page B

when she left, though if she had stayed who knows by then when I saw those guys if I wouldn’t have been over it, so to speak, so wouldn’t have run over them and banged the alive guy’s head on the street, but truth is, and thanks for calling me Daddy—you never say that, not in ten years, so maybe it’s like, well, your final visit, sort of a planned keepsake for me—but I doubt I would’ve been that over it when I saw them, even in a killer-animal way, so would’ve done, even if your mom hadn’t left me, what I did and been given even more years because with you both not gone the judge could have said ‘Hey, he still had his family there, so his wife didn’t leave him because she thought he was crazy and he wasn’t crazy in addition because she left him and took their only other child, so he even shouldn’t more have done what he did,’ or something—I can’t put words into a judge’s mouth, they’re of another breed and their legalese is way past me. The other truth is I’m still glad what I did to those guys, the worst of the two for all time erased, for nobody in the world deserved it more but maybe Nazi butchers of a thousand kids in one day or the Japanese in World War Two with Chinese babies on their bayonets if that story wasn’t just made up to get us to hate and kill the Japanese even more, and I lots of times wish, even sometimes for that driver-of-the-van’s sake, though that feeling of good for him doesn’t last long, because he could have told the gun guy to stop, you know—he could have shouted in the van ‘Stop, there’re kids in there, stop!’—that I’d finished him off too even if it would’ve no doubt given me a longer term, or maybe I don’t wish that for I’ve probably done all the time here, plus the two years to go, I can just about take.”
    Has to serve his maximum sentence, minus a few months, and is let out, returns to his old city and rents a single room, gets a job in a cheap hamburger-steak place, work he learned in prison, not the hamburgers so much or steaks at all though they’re easy enough, steaks a bit trickier, but just weighing and frying and grilling and boiling and recooking lots of food quickly and on a much larger scale and dishing it out all at once and where he was one of many cooks rather than the only one behind the counter now who has to do some of the dishwashing too. Daughter marries but doesn’t tell him where or when—she stopped writing him a few months after that last visit and her mother, when he called for Margo’s phone number and address when he got out, told him about the marriage and said “I’ll tell her you called, next time I hear from her—it could be this week or next—and if she wants to get in touch with you I’ll give her your phone number and address—what are they, and by the way how are you?” and he said “Exhausted, demoralized, done in, badly off, but couldn’t you call her today and tell her I’m out and want very much to see her, at least hear from her?” and she said “I’ll try”—has a baby very quickly he hears soon after that from his ex-wife when he calls again for Margo’s phone number or address or even her city and husband’s last name and who won’t give it, “Once again, that’s her business,” she says, “she has her ways, which I don’t necessarily approve of regarding you, but nothing I can say—I’ll keep forwarding your letters and packages to her if you keep sending them here care of me or Dave, though with the packages, since we also aren’t in great financial shape, maybe you can mail them first class instead of fourth or parcel post so we don’t have to put out for the extra forwarding cost—and Margo says, well she still hasn’t said anything about not wanting your mail, so