not have permitted it to be otherwise,
that just by being here Anders was tak-
ing something from his father, taking
his dignity, and forcing his father to
allow himself to be seen as he would
not, and did not, wish to be seen.
Anders’s father rarely left his bed-
room now, and there was a smell in it,
a smell he could see in Anders’s face
when his son entered, and sometimes
could even smell himself, which was
strange, like a fish feeling it was wet,
and the smell they could smell was the
smell of death, which Anders’s father
knew was close, and this frightened him,
but he was not completely afraid of
being frightened, no, he had lived with
fear a long time, and he had not let fear
master him, not yet, and he would try
to continue, to continue to not let fear
master him, and often he did not have
the energy to think, but when he did
he thought of what made a death a good
death, and his sense was that a good
death would be one that did not scare
his boy, that a father’s duty was not to
avoid dying in front of his son, this a
father could not control, but rather that
if a father did have to die in front of his
son he ought to die as well as he was
able, to do it in a way that left his son
with something, that left his son with
the strength to live, and the strength to
know that one day he could die well
himself, as his father had, and so An-
ders’s father strove to make his final
journey to his death into a giving, into
a fathering, and it would not be easy, it
was not easy, it was almost impossible,
but that was what he set his mind, while
he had his mind, on attempting to do.
The pain had reached proportions
where periodically there was nothing
else left, yearlong hours when there was
no person, no Anders’s father, just the
pain, but then the pain receded for a bit
and there was a person again, and when
he was a person again Anders’s father
could look his changed son in the eye,
and nod to him, and let the boy take
his hand, and listen to the boy’s sparse
gentle words, so like the words his wife,
the boy’s mother, had once used, and
then, when it was time, gesture with his
head toward the door so the boy might
step away as the pain came to claim his
father again.
After weeks there in hiding, Anders
finally ventured out of his father’s house,
ventured out to score medication to
blunt some of the edge of his father’s
agony, learning about a hospice em-
ployee known for his shady dealings,
and calling him, and the man who an-swered said Anders would need to come
in person if he wanted to talk, and he
sounded so white that Anders did not
relish revealing his own color, but An-
ders put his rifle in his car, and mus-
tered his courage, and drove over there,
and no one bothered him on the road,
and the man who sounded white turned
out to be dark, and Anders thought he
did not look like his voice, and then he
thought, who knows, maybe he thinks
the same about me.
Anders explained his situation, and
it was unclear if the man believed him
or if he did not, but he advised Anders
on what Anders needed, and Anders
paid in cash, and there was of course no
prescription and no attempt to pretend
there was a prescription, there was just
a brown paper bag that for some rea-
son reminded Anders of when he was
a boy and his father took Anders with
him to work and they sat among all the
strong men at that building site, and the
men respected his father, you could see
it in how they acted, and Anders had
felt proud as he sat with them, a boy
among men, and they had opened their
bags and had lunch together like equals.
On the way back to his father with
the painkillers, both hands on the steer-
ing wheel, Anders noticed just how
many dark faces there were, and how
the town was a different town now, a
town in a different place, a different
country, with all these dark people
around, more dark people than white
people, and it made Anders uneasy,
even though he was dark, too, but he
was reassured to observe that some of
the stores had reopened and the traf-
fic lights were mostly working, and he
even passed an ambulance, and it was
just driving normally, no siren blaring,
just driving from someplace to some-
place on a regular day, in no hurry, how
crazy was that, and when he got home
he went to his father and gave his fa-
ther the medication, and then Anders
passed from room to room and spread
the curtains, he spread the curtains wide.T
here would be moments in his fa-
ther’s last days when he spoke, just
a word here or there, or occasionally
the shortest of sentences, and Anders
was glad for these moments, these
words, even though he did not always
“I really just need the one.” understand them, for his father no lon-