Page 13 of So Far Gone

Rhys hummed a little laugh. “Technically, I think once you’ve fucked everything up, the only way to fix it is to fuck everything

down .”

She thought about this for a moment. Then she smiled a little, held up her glass, and they toasted.

***

Lucy Park burst into laughter when Kinnick asked her, “Who covers the radical right these days?”

“Uh, the government reporter?”

It took him a moment to understand what she was saying—that no longer was the fringe on the fringe. She explained to him that

state legislators, sheriffs, and county commissioners—even members of Congress—openly expressed beliefs that would have gotten

them labeled as members of a hate group a few years earlier, or at least as extremists, or unelectable loons. “We’ve got antivaxers

and tax protestors, flat-Earth school board members and at least one posse comitatus county commissioner. Oh, there’s also a rural sheriff who sits in the public library all day looking for books about gay

penguins so he can confiscate them. We’re on the border of Bizarroland out here.” Kinnick explained that one of the men who

had taken his grandchildren was a convicted poacher and “sovereign citizen” whose federal trial he had covered years ago.

“Think you could get me any clips you might have on this guy, Dean Burris?”

“Clips?” She laughed and pulled out her cell phone. “You think someone at the newspaper is clipping stories right now, Rhys? Maybe the elevator operator in her off-time?” She pulled out her cell phone. “Here.” She tapped

a few things into the phone and read: “Dean Burris? Dominion Eagle Killer?”

“Yeah,” Kinnick said. “I actually named him that.”

“You must be so proud.” She handed her phone to Kinnick.

He held it away, then closer, then away, until Lucy finally handed over her reading glasses, too. “Thanks,” Kinnick said.

It was so strange, trying to read on one of these small screens.

How did people do it? He tried to move the page down and somehow made it all disappear and she had to find the stories for him again.

Then he lost them a second time, and finally, she got closer to him and used her thumb to effortlessly flip through his three front-page stories about Dean Burris’s 2012 trial.

Their shoulders touching. She smelled great.

“Yep,” Kinnick said, “that’s him, all right.” There was nothing about Burris after those first stories until 2022, when a

headline read: “Dominion Eagle Killer Runs for Stevens County Commissioner.” The story explained that after serving two years

of a five-year federal sentence, Dean Burris was running for office, offering himself as a proponent of the County Supremacy

theory, the belief that county governments didn’t need to adhere to federal and state laws.

“Looks like he didn’t make it out of the primary,” Lucy said.

“Well, that’s comforting. Says here he’s originally from Addy,” Kinnick said. “That’s not far from where I’ve been living.”

“Wait, so this whole time you’ve been just up the road?”

Kinnick handed her phone back. “Well, sixty miles away, but yeah, not far.”

“I assumed you were harassing women in European hostels, or that you’d run off and joined the merchant marines or something.”

“Nah, I moved onto the last bit of our family land, between Springdale and Hunters,” Kinnick said. “My grandfather’s old,

vacant cinder block house. Seemed like a good place to disappear.”

“Disappear,” she said, not a question, but a word he couldn’t help wondering if she’d considered it herself.

Kinnick quoted Thoreau again: “?‘A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.’?”

“And what did you think you were letting alone, Rhys?”

“All of it,” he said. “Thirty years of covering science deniers and mindless politics... the triumph of utter stupidity.

It had even infected my family.” Kinnick told her the story of the Thanksgiving fight with Shane at Bethany’s house. “My fight

with Shane was the last straw. At some point, you look around, and think, I don’t belong here anymore. I don’t want to have

anything to do with any of this.”

“The world made me do it.”

Pointed, smart Lucy. “No. It was me. Or a team effort, anyway. But I did my part. I had no job. No future. I genuinely thought

no one would miss me. I’d alienated everyone I cared about: friends, family, you.”

“Don’t throw me in there.”

“I do recall you saying that you never wanted to see me again.”

“And yet here you are.”

Kinnick laughed. “Here I am.”

“And the last seven years?” Lucy asked. “You’ve just been up there pouting?”

He laughed again. “No. I concentrated on living simply. It felt like I was repairing my soul or something. I spent a lot of

time fixing up the house. I patched the roof. Rebuilt the pump house. Dug a garage for that old, shitty car of mine. Cut a

lot of firewood. Tried to rebuild the barn. Failed at rebuilding the barn. Took the barn down. Got into solar power and converting

batteries, tried to make my own compost toilet, which is still a work in progress. Walked in the woods a lot. Filled a lot

of journals and notebooks. Quit drinking for a few years. Started drinking again. Went fishing. Made some friends. Lost them.

Quit drinking again. Read nine hundred books.”

“Nine hundred?”

“Nine hundred and fourteen. So far. Classics. History. Philosophy. Novels. Got them at rummage sales. Libraries. Nothing contemporary.

I didn’t want to accidentally bump into Brexit or Harvey Weinstein or superfund sites or any of the bullshit I’d left behind.”

“Let me say, as part of the bullshit you left behind—”

“I didn’t mean it that way—”

“—I’m curious: in seven years of reading, what did you learn?”

He thought about telling Lucy about the book he wanted to write, rethinking philosophy and ethics through a naturalist’s lens,

a book he thought of as The Atlas of Wisdom . But he wasn’t sure he could survive the teasing she would administer. Instead, a line from To the Lighthouse flashed in his head: “?‘Little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.’?”

“Anything that wasn’t written by someone else?”

Kinnick smiled: Oh, this tart, intelligent, beautiful woman. Was it any wonder he’d fallen for her? “Let’s see. What did I

learn? That raccoons are assholes. That water is the most valuable thing in the world. That the sky at night should look like

a river of stars.” He sighed deeply. “And then, today—”

The bartender interrupted, asking if they wanted another drink. They both shook their heads at the same time.

“Today—” Lucy said.

“Today, I looked outside, and saw two strange kids on my porch. I didn’t even recognize my own grandchildren! Can you imagine?”

He shook his head. “And now...” Kinnick cleared his throat. “I just want to get them back. And find Bethany. Do what I

can to help them.”

It was quiet. The bartender set out a bill that Lucy quickly covered with a credit card. When Kinnick glanced over he could

see her watching him with a pained look on her face.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Come on. The way you just looked at me. What is it?”

Lucy sighed. “When I came to work here, you were like a superhero. The stories you worked. The way you’d just dig and dig

and dig. I’d come ask you about some federal judge, and you’d tell me where he went to college, what his wife did for a living,

what booze he drank at Charley My Boys. You knew everything, and if you didn’t know, you’d find out.”

Kinnick wished she would stop there. “And now?”

“Now?” She sighed. “Now you tell me that you’re trying to find your grandchildren and your daughter, but you don’t have a computer or a phone or any basic awareness of the world. Nothing but a broken-down old car and a busted-up face. A ten-year-old would have a better chance of finding them.”

“Are you done cheering me up?”

“And if you do find your grandkids, what are you going to do, Rhys? Seriously? They’re Shane’s kids. Without your daughter,

I don’t see that you have any rights here.”

Kinnick felt his shoulders slump. She was right, of course. “I don’t know, Lucy. I just... I have to try. Don’t I?”

“Try what ?” He didn’t answer and she repeated, “Try what, Rhys?”

***

He woke on Lucy’s couch, sat up and saw her son watching him from the dining room table, where he sat eating a mixing bowl

of cereal. Kelvin Park-Davis was, of course, bigger than Rhys remembered, but then he’d have been only nine or ten the last time Kinnick saw him. He was tall and thin, with

dark eyes, shaggy black hair bleached blond at the tips, and more than a trace of his mother’s fine part-Korean features.

Half-inked tattoos ran from his short sleeves to his wrists.

“So, you’re the guy who broke up my parents’ marriage?”

“I guess. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay.” Kel shrugged. “My mom said it wasn’t your fault.”

“Generous of her.”

“I always pictured you different.”

“I was different then.” Rhys felt his swollen cheek. “We met a few times when you were a kid, you know. Your mom brought you into

the office to trick-or-treat. I remember one year you were a bird.”

“Angry Bird,” Kel said.

“Understandable.”

“No. I mean, from the game,” Kel said.

“Oh, right.” Kinnick looked around the apartment. “And your mom is—”

“Also angry. She’s showering now.” Kel bent forward, as if looking around a corner. “Does your face hurt?”

“Yeah. A little.” Kinnick touched his sore cheek again, which was swollen like he’d been to a vengeful dentist. “A lot,” he

corrected. The Extra Strength Tylenol and the sleeping pill that Lucy had given him were wearing off. “Some guy put a dent

in my cheekbone.”

Kel squinted. “Zygomatic arch.”

“How is it that everyone knows what that is except me?”

“MMA,” Kel said. “It’s a common injury for fighters. You want some cereal?”

“What kind?”

“Frosted Flakes.”

“Maybe later. Do you have any coffee?”

Kel gestured with his head toward the kitchen. Rhys wobbled as he stood up. He walked past the kid, through the dining room—pictures