Free Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr Page A

sudden, to be in that house, I pulled myself up out of the bed and looked at the postcards I’d tacked to the wall. They were from my father, from his various stops on his way out west the year before—Des Moines, Topeka, Denver, Salinas, Salt Lake City, and Reno. At first, they all said more or less the same thing: I hope things are good there. I haven’t talked to her yet.
    When he arrived in California, though, his writings had changed. He had talked to her, eventually; he’d found her in Sacramento. Then he followed her to Stockton, San Francisco. For a while the letters—they’d turned to letters once he was more or less settled—included descriptions of where he was staying, whatever odd local radio or newspaper jobs he picked up, the new friends he made or the older ones with whom he’d reconnected. You’re going to love it here, he’d written from San Francisco. You’ll feel right at home. It’s wild and beautiful and everyone can be who they are.
    He’d say a bit about my mother— I talked to her on the phone the other day , or, I caught up with her outside the place she works —and always tried to sound upbeat. He promised that he’d come and get me soon, that we’d all be together again.
    But as the months passed he began to refer to her less, or with a different tone—he hadn’t seen her in a while, he wrote at one point, but he was sure that he’d speak to her soon. She gradually faded from his letters until finally, a couple of months before, he stopped mentioning her altogether. Then he had written from Kansas City, worrying my grandmother. And now there was a new postcard that I hadn’t put up yet, which had arrived just that week from Springfield, Missouri. He was on the move again, but heading east, maybe toward Wisconsin.
    Although I tried not to dwell on it, I missed my father. He wasn’t a bad man, or even a particularly bad parent—I had good memories of him bouncing me on his knee and ruffling my hair, and singing songs while he fried bacon and eggs in the morning. He was gentle and big-hearted, and he cared about things being right in the world. It was just that he wasn’t centered, the way that Charlie was. He couldn’t really focus on anything, except on the one thing that he could never hold, my mother. Even when the three of us were still living together, she had seemed to be leaving already. I could still recall her perfume and her high, impatient voice—but I couldn’t, despite the pictures in the attic, conjure her face at all.
    I didn’t want to think about my mother, though, so I got up and went over to the bureau where the postcard from Springfield lay. It was a picture of a Civil War—era cannon in front of a church, against a backdrop of clear blue sky. I’m staying with some friends I met this summer at the music festival , my father had written. I’ve got a job here with a radio station starting next week, and I’m going to save some money. As soon as I do, I’m coming to get you—and then we can go back to California!
    There was a hopefulness to this postcard that was different, that seemed real this time, and it raised my own hopes too. I thought about writing back, but as usual, there was no return address. In my shirt drawer were half a dozen letters I’d written, waiting for when I’d have a place to send them. If he was staying in one place long enough to work and save some money, maybe that time would be soon.
    But while I stood looking at the postcard, I felt jumbled, confused. As unsettled as I’d felt at the dinner table that night—and as uncomfortable as I felt with most of the people in town—I still loved living with my grandparents. The everyday routines of their house and their lives, the meals and chores and evenings at home, were comforting and solid. And I loved wandering in the country; I loved my life outside, I loved playing and biking with the dog. It was a different kind of life than I had with my father, and with both of my