Free And Sons by David Gilbert

your life?—but by mile eight, as Richard made his final sprint across the Santa Ana River and headed home on South Street, all these old feelings that chased him shifted into action, a building about to explode, a killer stalking his house, the love of his life leaving on an airplane, one of those scenes in which our hero has to run, and it was here, in these cinematic equivalencies, that Richard became happiest. As many people know, or know by way of cliché, everyone in L.A. has a screenplay in their back pocket. Whatever the dubious truth of that claim, the idea can settle on your shoulder and whisper dialogue in your ear until you’re touched by the spirit and born into believing again. Hollywood, like God, needs constant feeding.
    The thing is, Richard did have talent. As a boy he wrote comics that Jamie illustrated, stories like “The Destructor” and “Fealty Blaze,” which we all read with great gusto. I was a particular fan of “The Coarsers of Bedlam” and its tale of Random Coarser, who had to kill a person every week in order to keep Death from his terminally ill son. The ending, with Random’s suicide and the older son’s awful new responsibility, still unnerves me. Later Richard devoted most of his writing energy to his journal, which he maintained with teenage vigilance; whenever anyone came over, he made a show of Shut the fuck up until he had finished a particular entry and if you called him a pussy or a fag, as my brother once did, he’d slug you in the stomach hard enough to raise tears. All of this changed when one day his father asked if he could read some of his entries. Most kids would have said, Are you insane? but Richard had been waiting for this moment, had essentially been writing for this moment, and not only did he hand over his journal but he ran upstairs and retrieved his previous journals as well. Hewas fourteen years old. For three days his father read without comment, and Richard waited. It was like a tight-lipped confession, a silent unburdening of self. There were long passages concerning the man and his literary fame, how Richard was proud yet tormented, wishing their relationship was better though also wondering if either of them really cared, or if maybe they preferred the easier distance.
Sometimes I think we should talk exclusively by telegram
, he wrote,
with its helpful shorthand and stops
. August 21 was a long-imagined eulogy to his father. April 5 was a make-believe suicide note. There were other things, feuds and crushes and the overall grind of Exeter, drinking beer and smoking pot in Central Park, Whip-its and minor shoplifting, a bit of sex on the weekend, in particular December 19 with Abigail Hunter, but years later Richard was struck by how father-focused these entries were, how every word seemed crafted for the old man and how even today that lone entry on February 9 (and who knew the cause) could stagger him:
Am I a cherished thing?
After three days his father finally returned the stack. “You have a good strong voice,” he told him, and gave Richard a tap on the back, like a doctor diagnosing good health without bothering with the stethoscope. Richard might have hoped for more, but this seemed enough, and for a while his lungs took in mellower air and he only slugged someone when they really deserved it.
    Jamie recalled this short-lived period as the storm before the shit-storm.
    A year and a half later,
Percy, By Himself
was published.
    The novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award, which some considered a consolation prize. The judges praised the story of Percy Sr. and Jr. and their silent struggle for connection, citing in particular the journal entries of Percy the younger and their uncanny adolescent verisimilitude (a word Richard had to look up, thinking it had something to do with vivisection). You have a good strong voice indeed. What a crock. Unbelievably his father pled ignorance to lifting so many of the entries word for word. “I swear I