#vandermatthews

It has little use in his world nowadays but what else was it, raising those boys? And each time he said behave or I won't allow it, he wondered how it felt to hear. Dutch's only approximation of the feeling was through him. There is no one to ask, anymore, no one to goad into playing pretend, whether the question was of his self control or of their concern for his sake. He would like to think he was a different man than those who raised the ones that are left. He's always been a dreamer, in that way. He knows, constantly drifting on powdery white waters and as sober as he will ever be, that he is certainly no different these days.

He supposes what does have place in his life, place of the sort that he can touch and appreciate, say much. His vices: a crate of the beer that he hardly cares for and yet cannot get enough of; his blow, though he barely needs it to feel the jitters set in each morning; his cigar tin, which has been upgraded thrice since the day, which, if someone asked the great thinkers of European psychology, may even be a perverted rouse to poison his own lungs as penance. The blond puts it as helpin' the factories get a head start on the free land, which infuriates whatever intellectual part of Dutch remains. To the perverse, perhaps even her lingering items count: the journal he reads when in need of his daily lashings, and the perfume he spritzes to treat the tremors in his hands.

Miller counts as vice, too, if mild obsession can qualify him as a moderate addict and if not, because he has come to realize knowledge does not deserve the care he has given it all these years. Such little good has it done him to think. To have thrown out his things — they surely were precious, although he can't remember now what sorts of things they were — so that An American Eden would have its bed is a vile action. He despises this volume the most, having turned to desire when the land sprawled before him; a fool. He resists the urge to tear chunks out of Miller's works and instead marks lead lines right through the thin, slippery pages. These copies have always reminded him of bibles. Useless as each other. God only serves when He is questioned before someone with a real opinion. People take such a fancy to Dutch, then, or at least in speaking with him.

It would seem his uncertainty is the most important part of his body. To the people who really matter, anyway. His shame at having been once unsure is no longer soothed by having him beside him, or near him, or alive— alive and far, far away would have done just fine, for God's sake it did fine those years he skipped off to play house. (She was a fine girl undeserving of the fate, but sometimes he wishes to wake and find that she lived and he stayed.) Micah is little more than a starved vulture he continues to take pity on, whose interest in his lack of answers wanes as his tiresomeness of asking the same questions grows and Dutch exhausts of dancing for his amusement, knowing now what game they play. Javier was never interested in a man who knew naut. The others hadn't any interest in anything, much less Dutch, and had attached themselves to his hip by sheer accident on their way to lay down on the train tracks.