Free The Good Father by Noah Hawley Page A

Tolan led me into the room, the agent stood. “Ten minutes,” he said, walking past us.
    I stepped into the room. Tolan, remaining in the hall, closed the door behind me. For the first time in months I was alone with my son.
    My mouth was dry. I thought of Danny’s birth. Six pounds, ten ounces, big blue eyes. I pushed this away. They were cheap thoughts, easy tears. Now was not the time for heartbreak. This was a rescue mission.
    “I’m trying to get you a lawyer,” I said.
    He didn’t say anything. On TV a perky weatherman with a spray-ontan told us what the week held in store for Cincinnati and the surrounding region.
    “I’m going to see your mother after I leave here,” I said. The blinds were closed, the fluorescents flattening every shadow. I had stood in a thousand hospital rooms talking to a thousand patients. But this time I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
    He shifted on the bed, the cuffs rattling against metal rails.
    “This is the only channel I could find where they weren’t showing it over and over,” he said.
    I nodded. It. Showing it . As if the thing he was accused of doing was an inconvenience ruining his prime-time viewing experience.
    “A public event,” I said. “Hundreds of students with cameras, reporters, cameramen from local and national media outlets. There will be new footage for months, photographs.”
    On TV the weatherman said, “High winds in the Plains states, possible funnel clouds.”
    “Do you think you could get me another blanket?” he said. I tried to meet his eyes, to find some connection, but he kept his eyes glued to the screen, as if somehow the weather held the key to understanding his predicament.
    In a closet I found a thin cotton throw. I put it over him. I didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t language to address a tragedy of this size. It was an event so big as to block out the sun. New words needed inventing, new idioms and phrases. And yet I should just ask him. Straight-out. He would tell me the truth, wouldn’t he? I was his father. But I couldn’t. Part of me didn’t want to know.
    “Have you eaten anything?” I asked.
    He shook his head. I went to the sink and washed my hands thoroughly. I dried them on a paper towel, then crossed to him and checked the bandage on his leg. It was something concrete to do. An act of medical routine I hoped would ground me, take the race out of my heartbeat.
    “The wound looks good,” I told him. “Just a few stitches. You might not even have a scar.”
    He smiled without teeth.
    “That’s too bad,” he said. “I’ll probably need a few scars where I’m going. Scars and a sock full of pennies.”
    He was a skinny kid, average height, handsome. What did convicts in prison movies call the pretty ones? A chicken.
    “They told me you spent some time in Austin,” I said.
    “I went all over,” he said after a moment. “The mountains, the desert. It really is an amazing country.”
    You loved the landscape so you shot a politician , I wanted to say. But I didn’t. There was no room for sarcasm in this place. Besides, he was innocent. I would will it to be true.
    “Danny,” I said.
    “It’s Carter now,” he said.
    “I don’t know that person,” I said. “But I know Daniel Allen. I know my son. I know he’s not a man who could do a thing like this. Shoot someone. I know that. I know it. Just tell me what happened. A man stands next to you. He pulls a gun. He fires a few shots. You wrestle the gun away from him just as the cameras turn. Things like that happen all the time.”
    Did they? Even as I said it, it sounded crazy. We lived in a world of instant images. A shot was fired and the gunman was captured on film. Where was the room for error?
    We shared a moment of silence. Tomorrow would be a hot day in Oklahoma and parts of the Southwest. Rainstorms were expected in Portland, Oregon.
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
    “What does that mean?” I said. “You have been