Beginnings are hard. This is what I've come up with.


1.
My father had a talent for sleep that was the one remarkable thing about him. He devoted himself to it twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours a night. He’d come home from the store at five-thirty and putter in the garden till dinner, then as soon as he could he would drift up to his bedroom and remain among his deep and shadowy dreams until morning. It worried me at first, in those early months. I was afraid he would keep sleeping longer and longer until he lost himself completely and would never find his way back. But eventually I got used to it. I realized that, in many respects, given all that had happened, it wasn’t such a bad response. Where someone else might have started drinking or shouting or carrying on, where another man might have gotten angry or bitter or just terribly sad, Henry Bailey slept. It became a central fact of our lives. One of those things you come to count on.
So when I came home from work one night in early June I wasn’t expecting anything. It had been one of those slow, slack nights that even the seediest of bars will occasionally suffer, and I’d spent most of it drinking de-caf coffee and playing pool with Tiny Alice. By eleven-thirty it seemed easier just to go home. I parked on the street and climbed out of the truck, and only then did I notice the flickering glow spilling out over the steps of the porch.