Deep river

"Can you take me to where my son lives?" the almost unrecognizable man in the back of the police car asked. It was Dad, all right, but he didn't recognize me. The officer said he had found him crouched before a fence near the roadside, reaching through the wire and pulling the leaves from the other side, mumbling something about money. His mind had simply blanked out, and he had wandered through the woods. He was a mass of bruises and wounded flesh. As we drove back to the house, I wondered about the noxious disease he had lived with for so long. I had seen it rob him of his manhood. It had killed his career and destroyed his self-respect. Over the years, we children had watched this disease reduce him to a childish babbler. As I pulled off Dad's trousers to bathe his legs, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of dead leaves. "Take good care of this gold," he said. "I found it by the railroad." - Back cover.