I’ve lived in Iowa City five years now and feel no more like an Iowan than on my arrival. My sons were born here and my wife works for the state, but I still keep Kentucky plates on my truck. In winter I grow a beard and people take me for a Mennonite. Clean-shaven in the summer, I look like a country boy come to town, which is pretty much what I am.

On my last trip home I plundered my parents’ house for the remains of my childhood—notebooks, cigar boxes full of trash and treasures, every letter I ever received. I hauled it back to Iowa. The plan was to use the material for my next book. Looking through this loot brought on hundreds of memories that immobilized me with depression. I went on a drinking binge that got me banned from my regular bar for falling through a window. I’ve been banned before and know it’ll blow over. What won’t go away is the trigger to the binge—a letter dated from seventeen years back.

Ten of us boys grew up together on the same hill, out on different ridges in Eastern Kentucky. Paths through the woods connected our houses. VISTA workers considered us a rough bunch. We broke things and stole and fought, and all of us smoked cigarettes. We were from three families, each of us having at least one brother, except Tommy.

Tommy lived closest to me, the houses being separated by a narrow hollow that carried rain off the hill. He was quick-witted, very smart, and a bully. We were the same age, along with another boy named Carl. As the three oldest, we vied for leadership. Carl’s power came from his ability to be cruel. Mine was the product of recklessness—I was willing to do anything for the thrill of it. Tommy got his power from being a liar. He lied in a way that was truly astonishing. Whatever you had—a gun, a fish, a car, a fight—his was bigger and better.

None of us had it easy at home and we all had quirks that the rest accepted. One of us enjoyed setting fires. Four of us were thieves. Another cut up dead animals. As teenagers our mischief became misdemeanors, sending three of us to court. Only two graduated from high school. One got married at seventeen while another began a prolonged and tricky relationship with the county law. We all began smoking dope. Five of us joined the service. I failed the physical, but Tommy didn’t. In October 1976 I received the following letter from him:

Chris    What the fuck is going on? I bet it sure is peaceful in the old Town. Are you going to college? DO you have a job? I have to ask all these questions. California is just great. there is so much DOPE I cannot smoke it as fast as it comes in. The hash is so fucking good you would not beleave it. I go to work fucked up, and get off work fucked up. Maybe around Christmas I can send you some # 50 grams or so. I know you would love it. I work on a ward in a big army hospital. IT is as fun as hell. I work with children. They are from 1 week to 16 years of age. I have a lot of freinds who just love to get fucked up. I think the army is a cool place to be. It really pissed me off because you could not get in. But I guess you will make it. I think about you and all the rest all the time. I wish you could be here with me. I know you would love Calif. There is so much to do and see. I am going up the coast to learn how to surf this summer. I think that will be fun. Well Chris there is not much to write about. I just had a few minutes and thought that you might like to here from me. YOU can put this letter in a frame and keep it. HA! HA! Write me as soon as possible. When you are this far away from home you appreciate a letter from a good friend. I only wish we had had better times together. But we still had some good ones. I was just thinking the other day about the time we got caught on top of the high school. I laughed my ass off. Well I guess I will close for now, but I will write again as soon as you return my letter.

Your Best friend ALWAYS,

Tommy

In Iowa this summer, I read the letter again, the first time in seventeen years. I removed a photograph from a frame and slid the letter behind the glass. I hung it on the wall, recalling that Tommy had received a dishonorable discharge. He came home using foreign slang with a different accent. He bragged at shooting up with ice water just for the rush. His drugs were better than mine. He could get higher for longer.

I had left home and was living in town in an apartment made of concrete block. To keep warm, I slept on the kitchen floor in front of the gas stove’s open door. Someone broke in and stole my stereo. I called the cops, who asked if Tommy might have stolen it. I knew by the way the cop asked that he was pretty sure Tommy was guilty. I said no, absolutely not.

During this period I was very concerned that drug abuse had messed me up. Instead of quitting, I performed personal experiments to see how bad off I’d got. One day I took a half hit of acid without telling anyone. If I could function while tripping, and nobody knew, then I was probably all right. I went to a store, talked to people, and even risked visiting the landlord. No one seemed to know how blasted I was.

That afternoon, Tommy came over. My high was peaking and I felt great, seeing patterns of color everywhere. Tommy seemed very uncomfortable. He was forcing himself to talk.

“Play a record,” he said. “Let’s hear some Skynyrd.”

“I don’t have a stereo.”

“You used to have one right there, didn’t you?”

He pointed to the shelf where it had been. Since he’d never visited me before, I knew that he had stolen it.

“No. Never did.”

He argued with me. I sat calmly, pupils dilated, hallucinating in a minor way. I enjoyed his discomfort and confusion. He finally said that he knew I’d had a stereo, and he could prove it. He stared at me, waiting for me to ask how, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t give him any room to admit he’d taken it. I just sat there, denying ever possessing what he’d stolen from me.

During the next year, Tommy and I began selling dope, though on a different scale. For every three bags of pot sold, I got one free, which lasted me about a month. It was a way to maintain my habit without costing anything, like a guy selling cars to keep a good set of wheels around. Tommy got in over his head, however, and the law ran him out of the county.

Twelve years later, I saw Tommy again. I’d been gone for a long time, gotten married, come home, and bought a house with no plumbing. Tommy walked in the house while I was putting insulation in the roof. I was in the rafters, my eyes burning and my skin itching from fiberglass.

“Well, Chris,” he said. “I thought you’d be a brain surgeon by now and here you are a carpenter. You should come work for me. I got twelve guys working under me and made two hundred thousand dollars last year. Is that your rig in the driveway? I drive a Trans-Am that will flat shit and get it.”

I got drunk with him that evening. Carl came by. He was missing some teeth from rot and his hair had turned completely grey before age thirty. His arm was in a permanent crook from it getting run over by a truck after he passed out in the main road. Tommy didn’t stop bragging and lying all night. He worked as a mason for his brother-in-law and drove an old pickup. I couldn’t believe how little he’d changed. I egged on his more outrageous lies, as I always had, and at the end of the night he said, “Chris, you ain’t changed a lick.”

A year later I was living in Iowa when Carl put a .38 to his head. His wife found him. The TV was on and a full beer sat on the couch arm. He’d just bought a new car. He didn’t know his wife was pregnant.

Five years after that, my first book was receiving a lot of press at home. Tommy called. He was drunk. He asked what I was drinking and I told him Beam, and he said he was drinking Bookers—more expensive, higher proof, smoother taste. They don’t even sell Bookers in our county because no one had the money to buy it. I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t have to.

“Am I in your book?” he said.

“No,” I lied.

“It was my fault Carl killed hisself,” he said. “I was supposed to go to his house and see his new car that day, but I got drunk instead. If I’d gone, he’d not have done it.”

Tommy was lying, and he knew I knew, too. It wasn’t Tommy who had gone there late, it was another of us boys from the hill. Tommy had to lie to convey how bad he felt. It was the only way, because we had become men in a place where we were not allowed to show emotion. His lying had become so sophisticated that it didn’t matter to him if I knew he was lying. He had to borrow another man’s life to contain his own guilt.

He felt as if he could somehow have prevented Carl’s death. I felt the same way. There had been signs all along, but I didn’t recognize them. All the boys felt responsible, the whole hill of us. After the suicide, one of us became a preacher. Another swore never to drink again, and he hasn’t. A third started drinking and never let up. I swore to honor Carl’s memory and I’m still trying.

The last time I went home I was in a gas station when a ’78 Skylark pulled into the lot. The muffler was wired on. The car sat so low I knew the shocks were shot. A man got out wearing painter’s clothes, loose and white, flecked with dried drips. It was Tommy. He reached into the car, lifted a small boy out, and walked him to the bathroom. They went in together. I realized that the boy was Tommy’s son. After a few minutes they came out and got in the car, and I understood that after thirty years of knowing Tommy, I’d just witnessed the part of him that we had always denied each other. Because of that we were unable to forgive each other, either.

When I sit in Iowa and read this old letter from Tommy, I see words of love that seek forgiveness. I am able to forgive now. I have to because I can’t afford another Carl. I read the letter and feel bad because I never wrote Tommy back. I should have, too. He put a lot on the line to compose a letter, perhaps his biggest lie, and I didn’t write him. Maybe that’s why he stole my stereo. Maybe that’s why I went on a three-day drunk. Maybe this is part of why I live in Iowa instead of home. I miss it every day. I miss Carl and I miss all of Tommy’s wonderful lies. I miss the boys who’ve become men. Most of all, I miss knowing their children.