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This book is the winner of the Associated Writing Programs 1992 Award in Short Fiction. AWP is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to serving American letters, writers, and programs of writing. AWP's headquarters are at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia.
Copyright 1993 by Daniel Lyons All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America LC 93-3464 ISBN 0-87023-865-5 Set in Adobe Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lyons, Daniel, 1960 The last good man / Daniel Lyons. p. cm. ISBN 0-87023-865-5 (alk. paper) I. Title. PS3562.Y4483L3 1993 813'.54dc20 93-3464 CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available.
Some of the stories in this collection have appeared elsewhere, sometimes under different titles and in different form: "The First Snow," in Story; "Violet" in Redbook; "The Greyhound'' in Playboy; "The Clear Blue" in Santa Monica Review; "The Birthday Cake" in Crescent Review; "The Last Good Man" in GQ; "Brothers" in Oxford American. "New Math" was part of a manuscript for which the author received a Hopwood Award at the University of Michigan. "The Greyhound" was awarded first prize in the Playboy College Fiction contest (1992).
Page v
For Rosamund, and in memory of my mother
Page vii
In a dark time, the eye begins to see THEODORE ROETHKE
Page ix
Contents
The First Snow
1
Violet
16
The Miracle
33
Giancarlo, for a Moment
50
The Greyhound
58
All Best Wishes
77
The Clear Blue
89
The Birthday Cake
105
New Math
110
Brothers
126
The Last Good Man
143
Page 1
The First Snow
The newspaper prints their names, and I admit that makes it worse. There are sixteen of them, and my father, whose name begins with A, is at the top of the list: Henry Abbott.
There was a rest area in Derry, apparently, and a path into the woods, and a giant hollow sycamore in the meeting place where they were arrested. The story in the Gazette says New Hampshire state troopers have been watching for weeks, camouflaged. They have videotapes.
The phone calls begin: more words for fag than I knew existed. Mom takes a call, listens, and slams down the phone. Her hair is matted to her head, her blouse is wrinkled, her eyes are bloodshot from not sleeping: she looks the way she did the time Jenny's appendix burst and we sat up all night in the hospital waiting room. She unplugs the phone.
"Visiting his mother," she says, disgusted. That was the excuse Dad used when he went out yesterday. I'm trying to remember how long he's been visiting Nana on Sundays.
She lights a cigarette and then stubs it out, so hard that it snaps. "Bob, I'm sorry," she tells me, "but I won't live with this."
Dad spent the night in jail. Mom said she couldn't handle the police station, all the smirks and snickers. He was arraigned this
Page 2
morning, and now, six hours later, he's still at his lawyer's office. I imagine this is a first for Mr. Pangione. He's a contract man: wills, taxes, divorcethe last, I think, may be of use when the criminal case is finished. I picture the two of them in their big leather chairs: Mr. Pangione embarrassed and looking down at his desk, my father fidgeting, afraid to go home.
Dad does more than jump into strange cars in rest areas. The big surprise is that he has a steady. All I can gather from the conversation taking place behind the bedroom door upstairs is that the steady is married, and that he too is shocked about Dad's adventures in the woods.
"What, and do you love him? Do you love him? I can't believe I'm asking this! My husband! I'm going to be sick."
Dad starts to cry. I can hear his wet words, but I can't make them out. Oddly, the news of the steady doesn't seem so bad.
Jenny and Nelson are in the family room playing Chutes and Ladders, oblivious. Jenny is seven and Nelson is fiveboth, I hope, too young to remember this. I, however, am seventeen.
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