The Good Father

by Noah Hawley

  The room was dark, blinds drawn. My suitcase sat on the floor like a corpse, watching me. I felt nervous in my hands, and as I stared at the suitcase, a great weight settled over me, a heavy blanket of exhaustion. Was it self-preservation that caused me to fall asleep then? An anvil of depression dragging me down? Whatever the cause, I slept like a dead man, waking hours later in a panic, unsure of where I was. Outside the sun was setting.

  The suitcase hadn’t moved.

  In my socks, I walked over to it and cracked open the lid. I dug down through suit jackets and toiletries and took the photocopied pages from their envelope. They still had a slight chemical smell, a residue of ink and heat.

  And then, before I could chicken out, I turned on the lamp by the bed and settled in to read.

  EXCERPTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF CARTER ALLEN CASH,

  AKA DANIEL ALLEN.

  [Editor’s note: What follows are the only surviving entries in the Montana Section of Daniel Allen’s personal journal. They begin seven months prior to the assassination of Senator Jay Seagram.]

  To whom it may concern: This is a private journal! If you are reading this without permission you must stop! These words are not for you. You cannot understand their full meaning.

  All you can do is get it wrong.

  November 5, 20__

  Snow. Light to moderate. Driving north on 287 I realized I could see my breath inside the car. Need to get the heater fixed. Near Ennis I had to pull over. Found a sweater in the trunk. I did some jumping jacks to get the blood moving. It’s hard to resist the idea that the drop in temperature isn’t a signal of something bigger. Winter as a symbol. The end of the year. The death of it.

  Fact: This far north the sun sets around six. Today the cloud cover made nightfall seem earlier. The northern woods feel gloomy. There’s no other word for it. The trees are thicker here, and I go miles without seeing a town. Montana is the triumph of nature. It is survival.

  This morning I found myself thinking about Austin. Fact: It’s been a month since I left. I did the math while I was driving. A month. The word used to mean something, a measure of time made up of weekdays and weekends, but now there is just the road. There is sunrise and sunset. There are gas stations and rest stops, mile markers and two-lane blacktop. Sometimes I go so long without seeing another car I worry I have driven off the edge of the earth.

  To occupy my mind, I make up my own books on tape. I tell myself the story of the Explorer, a man who first discovered this endless stretch of woods. He is bearded and rides a heavy packhorse, but the horse breaks its leg in a hidden gully after the first snowfall, and he’s forced to shoot it.

  That winter is the hardest. The Explorer loses thirty pounds and has to eat the shoe leather from his boots. At night he hears wolves circling his tiny camp, scheming, howling. There is a wife somewhere waiting, a son who has forgotten his father’s face. When he feels lowest, the Explorer reminds himself that he is doing this so that others will have light where he had darkness. They will have the Map. They will be able to avoid the hidden gullies, the dead-end trails. There will be no more secrets. He will expose them, every one.

  Some days the sun doesn’t rise at all.

  November 17, 20__

  The mechanic wanted three hundred dollars to fix the car. I thanked him and drove to an army surplus store. For one hundred dollars I bought gloves, a warmer coat, and a pair of used boots that looked pretty waterproof. I forgot a hat though, and spent the next few hours in the car covering my ears with my hands, one at a time.

  I’ve been collecting change, building a lump of loose coins in my pocket like a tumor. I like the weight of it. Paper money feels increasingly meaningless to me, a scrap of nothing, an IOU. Every time I saw a pay phone I thought about calling her, but I never did. What would I say? Not that it matters. Soon enough she will know everything. She will think back on that night and swoon.

  At a rest stop I purged myself of anything that tied me to Austin, the Longhorns T-shirt, the campaign flyers. I dumped the library books she had given me in the trash, all the mad Russians with their bloated words of sadness.

  Tomorrow I will be there. HIS town. HIS home. I picture a mansion on a hill, fires burning in the fireplace, a Christmas tree in the hall. But what if it’s a lie, like everything else? A set on a soundstage, filled with actors. A false home for a false man.

  Fact: There are no speed limits in Montana. The state is so big and the population is so small I sometimes go hours without seeing another car.

  November 19, 20__

  I arrived in Helena on Tuesday, and have been exploring it as the weather permits. Fact: It is the state capital, founded in 1864 by the “Four Georgians.”

  My plan was to sleep in the car outside town. The backseat is plenty comfortable, and I would spend the money I saved on food. But the cold made that plan untenable. So I’ve found a motel—the Derbyshire. It satisfied two of my conditions for lodging. First, it is not a chain. Second, the rooms are nonsmoking and cheerful.

  After checking in yesterday, I visited the capitol building. They offer a guided tour, which is where I learned about the Georgians. They were gold prospectors, apparently, though some say only one of them was actually from Georgia.

  The capitol building is built of limestone and granite. The people waiting in line for the tour were obese and dressed in bright, puffy down coats that made them look like grapefruits. Like most state capitols, the Montana state capitol has a huge rotunda with an impressive dome. Montana was founded by gold miners, and everything inside is painted gold, with big murals of Indians, miners, and cowboys.

  HIS office was on the tour. There wasn’t much in the way of security. I spoke to Xxxx [Editor’s note: name redacted] who is a staffer for the senator. She told me that HE had been in the office last week, but with the campaign they don’t see HIM that much.

  I asked about HIS family, if they traveled with HIM, and she said they did, but that the senator doesn’t want HIS kids to miss too much school, so they only go on certain trips.

  I smiled at the perfection of the lie. You tell the child you are leaving, but say it’s for their own good. They will be safer here without you, better off. When what the father really means is, you are a burden and I have more important things to do.

  I told Xxxx I had volunteered at the campaign headquarters in Austin. She said she loved Austin. We talked about Town Lake and barbecue. Xxxx said she was born in Bozeman and that she came home to be close to her parents, but that she hates the winters.

  I said that I’d be in town for a few weeks. I told her that I’d been traveling the country this semester, getting to know “the real America,” and that I hoped to see it all before I had to be back at school in the spring. Xxxx said that sounded really fun. She told me if I had time I should try the pie over at a place called Doreen’s. She said the apple was her favorite.

  I guess I was feeling lonely or I don’t know what, because before I could stop myself I asked her if she might want to have some pie with me sometime—not as a date but just for companionship—and she got kind of a weird look on her face, and said she had a boyfriend. I told her I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that I was new in town and didn’t know anybody.

  Behind me the docent said that the tour was moving on. He had a beard like a pirate and wore a checkered shirt and bolo tie. He was authentically Western, with zero irony.

  Xxxx told me she had to get back to work. She said, “Thanks for coming by.” I offered her my hand, but she pretended not to see it, and I went back to the tour, my face burning, embarrassed. I spent the rest of the tour thinking of what I could have said differently. It was stupid to suggest we see each other socially. Xxxx could have been a good resource, someone in HIS office, who knows HIS schedule.

  Then, on the way out, I saw my reflection in the glass of the door. My face was unshaven. It had been close to three months since my last haircut, and though I was wearing my new coat and boots, they were scruffy and cheap
. All in all I looked grungy and (to my eye) untrustworthy. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to be seen with me.

  I drove back to the motel, angry at myself for letting things go. At the gas station next to the motel, I bought a razor and some scissors. I took a hot shower as soon as I got back to the room—very hot, my skin turned bright red under the water—then put a towel on the bathroom floor and cut my hair, careful to keep it even on both sides. Then I lathered my face with soap and shaved. I couldn’t afford to spiral too far, looks-wise. You forget when you spend enough time alone that you have an outside image, a public face for others to see. The last thing I wanted was to become some kind of fringer, a loony with Jesus hair, who people cross the street to avoid.

  December 6, 20__

  Tonight was one of the loneliest nights I can remember. Weather has been a real factor this week in limiting my ability to move freely around town. It snowed so hard today that I left the room only to get food from the vending machine in the lobby. I feel bloated on junk food and TV. After the sun went down I lay on the bed, my face stinging from the cheap gas-station aftershave. I tried to remember the faces of people I knew.

  Something’s happening to me. But what?

  I thought about the office, HIS office, with its high ceilings and stained-glass windows, like it was a church. Like they were saying that somehow HE was more than just a man. HE is a senator from a golden state. A Golden Boy from a Golden State.

  Last night I ate pretzels and peanut butter packets for dinner. I lay on the lumpy bed, bathed in the light of the television, a lump myself. My thoughts felt too big for my head.

  Why did I come here? Why do I do anything I do? A person, alone in the dark, disappears little by little, piece by piece …

  [Editor’s Note: Here several pages have been torn out of the journal.]

  December 15, 20__

  It’s been a hard week. A second blizzard followed the first, and I found myself snowed in at the motel for several more days. Honestly, I lost count of how many. On Thursday I borrowed a shovel from the clerk and dug out my car, but when I turned the key in the ignition it refused to start, refused to even turn over. The mechanic tells me it’s the battery and that a new one will cost me two hundred dollars. He smiled when he said it, like I was a big meal and he hadn’t eaten in days.

  As soon as the roads were clear I hitched a ride into town. My new boots proved themselves to be not as waterproof as I had thought, and by noon there was bright pain in the toes of my right foot.

  In Austin, through cleverness, I had found HIS home address in a correspondence file on Walter’s desk. There was a bus that stopped a few blocks away, and I took it after eating some chili at a diner. When the bowl came, I realized that it was the first real meal I’d eaten in close to two weeks. The smell of the meat and tomatoes made my head swim.

  I ate it fast, almost without stopping, then went into the bathroom and threw it all up, the tomato sauce burning my nose and throat. Back at the table I felt shaky. The waitress asked if I wanted anything else. I said no, and while she was getting the check I ate three packets of saltines that had been left on an adjacent table by another diner.

  There is not a lot of foot traffic in Helena, Montana, during the winter months. Getting off the bus in the upscale residential neighborhood where HE lived, I tried to think of excuses I could make if the police stopped me or a neighbor became curious.

  Car trouble was good. Or maybe that I had gone home with a girl the night before, and now I was walking back to the bar to reclaim my ride. That sounded good. I was a clean-cut young man with all his teeth, and though I had cut my own hair a few weeks ago, I’d kept it even, and it had grown in nicely. I would smile when I told my lie, as if to say to the cop: You know how it is. The girl was hot and we’d been drinking and I didn’t think. Then, with a wink: But I guess it’s a small price to pay for a night in Heaven, to have to walk a mile or so in the cold.

  HE lives on Xxxxx Street [Editor’s note: The address has been redacted]. Luck—or fate—was with me, as HIS wife, Rachel, and kids, Neal and Nora, were coming out of the house just as I walked past! A Secret Service agent escorted them to a big black SUV.

  Rachel was wearing a long black jacket and jeans. She had a wool cap on her head. Neal wore a backpack and carried an action figure. It was the sound of a little girl laughing that first drew my attention to the house as I rounded the corner. Ahead, I saw Nora pack a snowball and throw it at her brother, who ducked and bent to pack his own.

  Rachel scolded the girl, but halfheartedly. They were too far away to make out the words, but you can tell a lot from someone’s body language.

  As I approached, the Secret Service agent looked over at me. I could see him assessing the threat level I presented, comparing his own instinctual assessment against a well-worn checklist (probably engrained in him at the academy). At that moment, Rachel looked up as well and saw me, and I raised my hand and waved.

  But now I was smiling. The sun on my face—while not warm—was still a welcome relief from the endless gray of the last few days. It rang off the bright white snow, like the pure, open tone of a bell. Walking through this upscale neighborhood, stretching my legs, filling my lungs with cold air, I felt good. I felt right again, whole, like the sun and the air and the ground under my feet were pieces of me that had gone missing.

  It’s hard to find the right words (how do you describe the indescribable?), but seeing her, Rachel, the luck of it, the impossible chance of it—combined with the heat and the air, and the light of the sun—made me happy, and so I raised my hand and waved, and Rachel smiled and waved back, the wave of a friendly neighbor.

  And though it was fleeting, this brief wave connected us, brought us together, joining us in a gesture of friendship.

  And then, behind her, Senator Seagram emerged from the house! HE was flanked by two Secret Service agents.

  Too many things happened in that instant to recount here. I was at once stunned by HIS appearance, and aware that I must not falter or show any chink in my disguise—as that of the friendly local.

  I forced myself to finish the wave, and to turn my eyes back to the street. I thought of the gun hidden inside the toilet tank in my room, the bullets stored in the bottom of my duffel. Was this it? The moment? Had I misread the day? From my peripheral vision I saw HIM and the family climb into the SUV. I noticed for the first time the advance car in the driveway, and also—looking ahead—a third car, this an unmarked sedan, inside of which sat two more Secret Service agents in long black coats—also looking at me.

  I nodded to them in a way I hoped was casual, as behind me the two SUVs pulled out of the driveway and sped away. Now the forgotten gun felt like luck.

  After a moment, the third car started its engine, executed a U-turn, and sped off in pursuit.

  I stood there in the silence afterward, half bent at the knees, trying to catch my breath. I was dizzy over what had just happened. I had gone to HIS house and HE had appeared. It couldn’t be simple coincidence. In my memory, the blinding warmth of the sun blended with HIS appearance. It was as if HE had been conjured up by the sun itself.

  Overhead, the sun went behind a cloud, and I saw spots, floating bubbles of cloudy gray, gliding across the snow.

  The Great Man was home, perpetuating the lie, reinforcing it like a stack of sandbags by a river. But where were the camera crews? The photo ops staged to sell the lie? Or was this lie personal this time? Told just for the benefit of the family?

  I pictured them now in my memory. The father and mother, and their two children. How happy they seemed—I thought of Rachel’s friendly wave. How happy to be whole, complete. And yet in that moment, as the sun reemerged from behind the clouds, I realized that there was an even bigger lie at work here.

  Because they weren’t a complete family. There was a crack, a missing piece. There had been a First Son, had there not? The Drowned Boy. He was a ghost, a shadow that followed them. He was gone, physically absent, but his shad
ow haunted them.

  And then I saw my own shadow on the ground. It stretched out toward HIS house, an elongated silhouette cast by the morning sun. Seeing it, I felt dizzy and had to sit down, right there on the icy concrete. The shadow was that of the missing boy. I was sure of it. But at the same time, I could see that it was my own shadow. Somehow it belonged to both of us. The shadow stretching toward HIS house connected me to HIM, to HIS family.

  I was overwhelmed momentarily by a landslide of thoughts. Coincidences? Synchronicities? Wasn’t I, too, a missing son? A lie? My own father had left, had moved to New York and remarried, had fathered two children. He had his own complete family now, his own happy family to stand in the driveway and wave to the neighbors. And yet they also had a ghost (me) that haunted them, a shadow son.

  Ahead, a dog trotted across the quiet street. (A wolf?) I was the link. THE LINK. That was clear to me all of a sudden. HIS lie was my lie. Picture three numbers side by side: 2 2 4. They are just a series of numbers until you add a + and an =.

  Suddenly, they become an equation, a conclusion (2+2=4), irrefutable.

  This is how these realizations felt to me. Like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

  I am the shadow son.

  Son/Sun??

  Alpha/Omega

  Wolf/Sheep

  [Editor’s Note: The remaining pages of this section have been torn out.]

  I finished reading, and lay back on the bed. The pages of Danny’s journal were arranged in a neat pile on the bedspread next to me. After Montana, the entries had gotten sparser, the details more mundane—miles driven, meals eaten, as if Danny had started keeping secrets from himself. There was barely any mention of Senator Seagram. No more talk of shadow sons, of the revelations that had come to him on a sunny street in Helena.