A Wasteland of Strangers

Leo Thayer

Four of us were present in the interrogation room when Novak taped his confession. Me, Ben Seeley, Joe Proctor, and Verne Erickson because the mayor and city council made him acting Chief. We didn’t have to prod Novak any, or even ask him more than half a dozen questions to clarify minor details. He just rolled it all off the top of his head in a flat, used-up voice — the tone most felons have when they know their ride’s over and done with.

I read the transcript three times. The main part made me feel like puking every time.

She called me Thursday night, late. It was the first I’d heard from her since we broke off the affair six months ago. She practically begged me to come to her house. She was a little drunk but not that drunk. She said she needed me, really needed me. I didn’t want to go because I was afraid of what might happen. I don’t mean violence, I mean getting involved again. The affair hadn’t been good for either of us, me particularly. She was the kind of woman who got under your skin like a tick and just kept burrowing. I spent six months trying to dig her out and I thought I had but I hadn’t. I tried to say no to her that night and I couldn’t. I went to her just like she asked me to.

We made love three times in three hours. For me, anyway, it was making love. But not a good kind, even then. I knew it but I wouldn’t let myself accept the truth. She led me to believe... no, that’s not right. I led myself to believe she felt the same way, that there was a bond or connection between us and we could rebuild what we’d had before. Except we hadn’t had anything before, just sex, that’s all. I don’t know how I could have deluded myself like that. Ripe for it, I guess. Lonely, mixed up inside my head — midlife crisis or maybe just plain crisis. I don’t know. I needed to believe, so I believed.

Friday night I drove back to her house, uninvited this time. Nine-thirty, quarter of ten, I don’t remember the exact time I got there. She let me in, but she wasn’t the same as the night before. In a strange mood even for her. No pretense of softness or sexiness. Bitchy, cutting, like she was spoiling for a fight. More than a fight... as though there was something in her that was pushing me to do to her what I ended up doing. I’m not trying to blame her when I say that. I’m through blaming anybody but myself. I’m only telling you the way it was.

She started yelling, provoking me right away. Saying I had a lot of nerve showing up unannounced and she was through with me, she didn’t want me coming around bothering her anymore. I told her I loved her. She laughed at me. She said I was pathetic, a sorry excuse for a man in and out of bed. She got right up in my face and screamed at me — lousy lover, sorry excuse, get the hell out and leave her alone because a real man was coming over, a man who knew how to satisfy a woman. On and on like that, spitting it in my face. Provoking me until I couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t think straight and started seeing red. I slapped her face, and she hit me back with her fist, screaming all the time. Tried to knee me, claw me. I slapped her again and she picked up the paperweight and swung it at my head, just missed me. I took it away from her and... that’s all I remember. I don’t remember hitting her with it. Only some part of me must have realized I’d done it twice or I wouldn’t have said so to Faith and then to Verne on the radio. Next thing I do remember is seeing her on the couch with her skull crushed and blood all over her head and face. And I was standing over her with the bloody paperweight in my hand.

I panicked. At a time like that... everything’s crazy, mixed up. You can’t think at all. The only thing that seems to matter is getting away, saving yourself. You’ve heard all that before, same as I have, and it’s true. You can’t face what you’ve done, the instinct for self-preservation takes over, you panic and run.

I threw the paperweight down next to her body and ran outside and washed off her blood with the garden hose. There was some on my uniform sleeve, too, and I rubbed that out with water. Faith was too wound up to notice the sleeve was wet, or maybe it’d dried by then... doesn’t matter. I drove away, fast. Just down the road from her driveway I passed Faith’s beat-up Porsche. Only car like it in Pomo, and we’d had words earlier in the day. I guess that’s why it registered, even in the state I was in. In the mirror I saw him turn into her driveway. I thought he was the man she’d been waiting for, the “real man” she’d thrown in my face. I still wasn’t tracking too well. I drove on a little ways and then... I don’t know, I turned around and went back there. I didn’t think about what I was doing or why, I just did it. I had no intention at that point of trying to put the blame on Faith. That’s the truth. If I had any intention at all, it was to cover myself by pretending to show up for the first time after the body was discovered.

But he came running out of the house just as I got there and things got all mixed up again. It was like I really was arriving for the first time and had caught him running out. Denial. Still wasn’t able to face the fact that I’d killed her, that I was capable of such a thing. So I treated Faith the way I would’ve any other suspect in similar circumstances. And when I saw her lying dead inside... it was as though I was seeing her there for the first time and the pain I felt was the shock of discovery. As though somebody else had done it. Faith, because he was right there. I questioned him, accused him, started to arrest him. Didn’t let myself think the whole time. Just doing my job, upholding the law, protecting the public interest. I know that sounds sick and crazy, but that’s the way I was that night. Sick and crazy.

It just went on from there. Faith jumping me and breaking my nose, me shooting him before he went into the lake, the search for his body and all the rest... it made the fiction I’d built up more real. And the more things escalated, the easier it was to shift my guilt onto him, make him the scapegoat. If he was dead or in prison, there’d be an end to it, a closure, and then I could find a way to go on living with myself and do my job. But now... I know I couldn’t have buried the truth, or even continued the pretense much longer. Too much kept happening, like there was an epidemic and I was the Typhoid Mary who’d started it all. I had that on my conscience too, along with Storm. I’ve been a cop too many years. A man like me can’t keep on riding the tiger. Sooner or later I’d have been torn apart. Might’ve been too late for Faith by then, but I never much cared about him from the beginning. God help me, I never gave a damn about him, and I’m not sure I do even now. He was a stranger. He was just another stranger.

Well, maybe Novak never cared about John Faith, but everybody else sure seems to. That’s one of the galling things about this whole lousy affair. They’re whitewashing Faith. Seeley, Proctor, everybody else with any clout in Pomo County. Dropping all charges against him, including one of the worst felonies there is, for my money — assaulting a police officer. The official line is that he’s suffered enough, that prosecuting him will keep the wounds open and delay a return to normalcy around here, but that’s just bullshit. They’re scared to death of a big lawsuit that might bankrupt the county; they made Faith sign a waiver against suing for damages as one of the conditions of the whitewash.

Another thing they’re afraid of is more negative publicity. Faith’s big show in front of the media and half the town, forcing Novak to admit guilt the way he did, made him a temporary two-bit hero and swung public sentiment over to his side. Prosecute him and there’d be another media circus throughout the trial, and if he was convicted, for a long time afterward, and that would have a negative effect on business throughout the county. Better to let the entire affair die a natural death, Seeley says; Faith goes away, the media has nothing to feed on, and pretty soon people start to forget it ever happened. He’s got a point, I guess. But I still hate to see Faith get away with all he pulled here, all the felonies he committed. A man like that, a hard case, a damn stranger comes in and tears up Pomo County and then walks away scot-free. It just don’t seem right.

That’s one thing that frosts my nuts. The other is Novak. Proctor’s going to prosecute him, all right, but it looks like he’ll let Novak plead to Murder Two or maybe even voluntary manslaughter. Same bullshit about healing wounds and keeping Pomo out of the media spotlight, negative publicity harming family tourism, plus the county’s just too poor to afford a high-profile or even a low-profile Murder One trial. Plus — and this is the one that really gets me — there’s Novak’s “spotless past record as a good, honest policeman,” which Proctor claims is an argument on behalf of leniency.

Jesus Christ! Good, honest policeman, my ass. He kills a woman, tries to frame somebody else for the crime, starts a chain reaction that leaves everything in a shambles... a cop can’t dirty his badge any worse than that, can he? I never liked Novak personally, and now I know why. The one thing I hate more than anything else is a cop who craps on his badge, and I think I saw something in Novak all along that told me he was that kind. I know what people say about me: I’m lazy, I’m a political flunky, I’m not the brightest or the hardest-working sheriff the county’s ever had. Well, maybe there’s some truth in all of that. But by God, there’s one other thing I am and that’s honest, an honest man who respects the law and does his level best to uphold it. I never took so much as a free cup of coffee in all the time I been in office. I never dirtied my badge in any way, and I never will.

If it was up to me, I’d stick Novak and every other dirty cop in a cell together and throw away the frigging key.

Harry Richmond

Well, faith’s gone. Left Porno yesterday afternoon in that rattletrap Porsche of his, as soon as they released him from jail. Thrown out of town is more like it; rumor has it one of the conditions of his release was that he leave Porno County straightaway and never set foot here again. He got off too easy, if you ask me. And I’ll bet any man twenty dollars that Novak gets off almost as easy when his time comes. The muckety-mucks take care of their own around here, while the rest of us get the book thrown at us if we step out of line just once.

I don’t mind saying it surprised me when I first heard about Novak’s confession. He was the last one I figured could’ve killed that bitch Storm Carey. Just goes to show you, I guess. You think you know people and what they’re capable of doing or not doing, and turns out you don’t. Sometimes you can be so far off base with a person, like Novak for one — and like George Petrie, for another — you begin to wonder if maybe you’re not as far off base with others. Not that man Faith, though. No sir, not him. I don’t care what he did or didn’t do in Pomo, or what anybody says about him, he’s a bad one through and through. Look at all the damage he left behind. Like a hurricane or tornado that went slashing through. Like we all got hit by a devil wind.

Folks keep saying that with him gone, it’s over and now we can get back to normal. I wish I could believe that, but I don’t. All the publicity — and there was plenty of it for some people — will bring in curiosity seekers for a while, sure, but it’ll keep away the family trade, the weekenders and vacationers the county economy depends on. Maybe most of the negative stuff will be forgotten by the time fishing season starts in April and it won’t have any real effect on next summer’s tourism, but I don’t believe that, either. As sure as I’m sitting here, there’ll be fewer fishermen and fewer overnight and short-term guests at Lakeside Resort next season. This part of Lake Pomo is never coming back to what it once was, and that’s the plain hard truth. You look at it that way, you also see that what happened with Faith and Storm Carey and Novak and the rest wasn’t much more than the beating of a dead horse.

Last night I took a closer look at my finances and prospects, and they’re worse than I thought. And as if that wasn’t enough to throw a man into a fit of depression, that thick-skulled Maria Lorenzo up and quit on me this morning. Came in and said her and her husband decided she couldn’t work for me anymore, no other reason, and then she walked out again with her nose in the air like she’d been smelling turds. Goddamn Indians, they’re all shiftless and worthless. Doesn’t really matter much, her quitting, I suppose; sooner or later I’d’ve had to let her go, because I’ll need even the little I was paying her for my own expenses. But now I’ll have to start cleaning the cabins myself, unless I can find another Indian who’ll work for less than minimum wage on a short-term basis, and the other downside is that I won’t have that big fat ass of Maria’s to watch anymore.

One more season. I figure that’s as long as I can hang on, that’s all the time I’ve got left on Lake Pomo. This time next year, if there’s not some radical change — and I don’t see how there can be — I’ll have to put the resort up for sale and move to San Carlos and depend on Ella to support me and hope like hell she doesn’t decide to marry some jerk who’ll throw me out on my tail. Just the thought of it puts me in a funk.

Like they say nowadays, life sucks. Some people, and it don’t matter how decent and hardworking they are, are just born to end up with the short end of the stick.

Lori Banner

Before he left, John Faith came to see me at the Pomo County Domestic Abuse Center, where I’m staying now. He said how sorry he was about what’d happened to me and I said how sorry I was about what’d happened to him. He said he was glad the district attorney had decided not to press charges against me and I said I was glad the D.A. had decided to drop all the charges against him. It sounds funny and not very sincere when I put it like that, but it wasn’t that way at all. We both meant every word we said. We wished each other well, and hugged each other, and then he was gone and I knew I’d never see him again, and it made me sad. But that’s the way it has to be. I knew it, and so did John.

I wish I’d met him a long time ago. There might’ve been something between us, something good. I’m sorry I didn’t and there wasn’t and it can’t ever be. Sorry about Earle, too — that I ever met him, and married him, and put up with his abuse, and killed him. But I can’t keep on being sorry about everything, and I won’t. I have to put the past behind me and start over fresh. That’s what my counselor says. She says my life didn’t end the night Earle’s did. She says if I want it to be, my life is just beginning.

She’s right. It won’t be easy, but I’ve made up my mind and I’ll stick to it. When I leave here I won’t be going back to the Northlake Cafe and I won’t be living in Pomo any longer. I’ll be returning to school in Santa Rosa, reentering the training program. I’m finally going to do what I always wanted to do, and this time I won’t let anything or anybody stop me.

I’m going to be a nurse.

Lori Banner, R.N. The best R.N. any hospital ever had.

Zenna Wilson

Howard left me.

Walked out, moved out, and he isn’t coming back.

When I came home Sunday evening, bursting with news of Chief Novak’s shocking confession, simply bursting with it, Howard was in our bedroom packing his suitcases. I said, “For heaven’s sake, you’re not going on another of your trips already, on a Sunday night?”

He looked me right in the eye. “No, Zenna,” he said. “I’m leaving you.”

“Leaving me?”

“I can’t spend another night in this house with you, not even for Stephanie’s sake. I’m moving out for good.”

“Howard, have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Come to them, is more like it. I’ll see a lawyer right away, have him start divorce proceedings. But you don’t need to worry. You can have the house, as much support for Stephanie as I can afford... just about anything you want. All I want is out.”

I must have gawked at him with my mouth open like a half-wit. I was utterly speechless.

He kept right on packing. And then, oh my Lord, then he said, “You might as well know the whole truth, Zenna. It’s not just you, this empty marriage of ours... maybe I could’ve gone on, at least for a while, if that’s all it was. But there’s somebody else. I’ve been seeing someone else.”

“Another woman!” I spat the words at him.

“Her name is Irene. She lives in Redding—”

“I don’t want to hear about your dirty whore!”

“She’s not a whore. She’s a widow with two small children—”

I clapped my hands over my ears. “I don’t want to hear it, I don’t care who she is, oh my God, how can you do this to me? How can you do this to Stephanie, your own child?”

“I’ve already talked to Stephanie. I think she understands.”

“Understands? She’s nine years old! What did you tell her?”

“The truth.”

“What truth? That you’ve been fornicating with a whore?”

“My reasons for leaving. All of them. She understands that most of the fault is mine, and she forgives me. Or will, in time.”

“Most of the fault is yours?”

“That’s right. Part of it is yours.”

“How dare you! Mine?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s also the truth. Believe it or not.”

“You’re the one who’ll be sorry, Howard Wilson. You’re the one who’ll be sorry. Cheating, fornicating with God knows how many—”

“Only Irene. And we love each other.”

“—and you have the gall to blame me...” I had to choke out the rest of the words. “Damn you, damn your lying, cheating soul to the fires of Hell!”

“Good-bye, Zenna,” he said, and he was gone.

That was three days ago and I still don’t understand how he could do such a terrible thing to his wife and daughter. To me. I’ve been a good wife, a good mother, I’ve made a strong Christian home, I never so much as looked at another man or lusted after one in my heart in sixteen years of marriage. Cooked his meals, washed his dirty clothes, cleaned his house, let him have my body whenever he wanted it even though I can no longer conceive. What more could a man ask of a woman, a marriage, a home? How could he do this to me after sixteen years? How could he humiliate me this way?

Well, he won’t get away with it. I’ll make him pay. As merciful God is my witness, when I get through with him he won’t have a dime left to give to his Redding harlot and her two little bastards!

George Petrie

Ramon a made me tell her everything. All of it, every detail. Then she made me write it all down and sign it and she took the papers and Christ knows what she did with them. And then she let me go ahead and put the money back in the vault. She’ll help me raise the $7,000 to cover the shortage, too; she’s already planning ways, in case the Indian Head Bay property doesn’t sell in time. We’re going to be much closer from now on, she said. A tight-knit unit, the way a husband and wife should be. Just Ramona and me. Together from now on.

So I’m out from under. Safe. I don’t have to worry about a thing anymore. Ramona will take care of everything for the next ten or twenty or thirty years. I go to work, I come home, I eat and sleep, and if Ramona decides she wants me to, I’ll even manage to perform stud service. But I’m not really here. I’m like one of the condemned convicts on death row, the ones who have no hope left — I’m already dead in my prison.

Dead man walking.

Anthony Munoz

I don’t know, man. They picked up Mateo in Southern Cal, all the way down near the border in some town called Chula Vista. He had a knife and he tried to rob this liquor store and the owner busted his arm with a bottle. They said he was trying to get money so he could cross over into Mexico. Where’s the sense, man? He was always goin’ on about how he’d never be caught dead in Mexico. L.A. was the place he wanted to be, he says, and he went right on through L.A. to this Chula Vista, heading straight for the border.

They’re bringing him back to Pomo pretty soon. I ain’t decided yet if I’ll go see him or not. The old man says he won’t, he washes his hands, and the old lady says she will, Mateo needs her as much as he needs God’s forgiveness, but I haven’t made up my mind yet. Sometimes I think I ought to, sometimes I think I’m better off if I wash my hands, too. Same as with Trisha and my kid. Sometimes I think I oughta go ahead and marry her — cool it with the drugs, get a job, maybe even finish school nights. And sometimes I think I’m better off the way I am, free and easy, get high and get laid whenever I want, go anywhere and don’t answer to nobody.

I don’t know, man. I just don’t know.

One thing I do know. I don’t want to end up like Mateo. Kidnapping, assault, attempted rape, attempted armed robbery... he’s gonna be in prison a long time. He could’ve killed somebody, too. Maybe he would’ve, someday. If I’d gone with him like he wanted me to... man, I don’t even want to think about it.

My big brother, Mateo. I always looked up to him. I always thought he was the coolest. But he’s not, no way. Es un don Mierda. He’s a real nobody, man. He’s a real Mr. Shit.

Richard Novak

My world has shrunk to a six-by-eight rectangle, to steel bars and concrete walls, to a hard mattress and a sink and a toilet. I’ve exchanged police blue for inmate orange; I’m looking out through the bars instead of in; I’ve become what I always despised. And so I pace a lot. I lie staring at the ceiling or sit staring at the walls and bars. I think too much. I even pray a little. Eva would be proud of me if she knew. She always said it’s never too late to reach out to God. Always said if you talk to Him, He’ll listen and understand and forgive.

Maybe she was right. I hope He can forgive me, because I don’t think I can ever forgive myself.

It’s not Eva I think much about, or even God. Mostly it’s Storm, and that crazy night, and what I did to her and to myself, all the things I threw away when I picked up that paperweight and brought it smashing down. Sometimes it seems it was someone else who committed that insane act — an impostor in Chief’s clothing. How could I have done it? And why? Love, hate, jealousy, passion... none of it seems very real now. Or very important. It’d be easy to believe that it was outside forces driving me, fate lifting that paperweight and smashing it down to complete some cosmic purpose. But I don’t buy that. It wasn’t outside forces, it was converging forces inside me. My responsibility. My guilt. All mine to live with for the rest of my natural life.

So many regrets, so much thrown away. Because I think about Audrey, too, more and more often. All the good things she is and tried to offer me. I ask myself why I couldn’t see her then as I see her now, why I couldn’t feel for her then what I feel for her now. Storm is the easy answer, but there are no easy answers anymore. My responsibility. My guilt.

She’s still there for me now; she comes to see me nearly every day. But I’d be a fool to expect her to be there when I get out of prison. My lawyer is confident he can plea-bargain the charges against me down to second-degree homicide, maybe even felony manslaughter. At the minimum that would mean a sentence of eleven years, with the possibility of parole in five to six. I can’t ask Audrey to wait five or six years for a convicted felon. I won’t ask her; I don’t have any right to put that kind of burden on her. She has so much to give — let her give it to someone else, somebody better than me.

You’re not given more than a couple of chances in this life. Screw them up, waste them, and that’s all there is. You get what you deserve then. You get exactly what you deserve.

Douglas Kent

One of the croakers sidled into my white rubber room a little while ago. I opened one eye to a slit, and when I saw that he wasn’t one of the shrinks with their idiotic questions (“Had any stimulating conversations with your bedpan today, Mr. Kent?”) or a nurse with a needleful of temporary fixative for the shakes, shimmers, and other fun by-products of alcohol withdrawal (perfectly calm at the moment, Kent had no desire to have his ass punctured unnecessarily), I decided to wake up and be sociable for a change.

The croaker, however, didn’t look particularly sociable. Very solemn, he was. Like a judge about to pass sentence on a miscreant. Which, as it developed, was precisely the case.

“I’m afraid I have unpleasant news for you, Mr. Kent,” he said.

“Is that so?”

“There is no easy way to say this, so I’ll be blunt. We have the final results of all your tests, and they’re conclusive. You have cirrhosis of the liver.”

“No surprise there, Doc.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Prognosis? Terminal, eh?”

“Barring a regenerative miracle, yes.”

Is that you I hear chuckling maniacally, Pa, you old fook? Well, clear a place for me in the hot coals and dish up a shot of sulfur and brimstone. When I get down there, we’ll hoist one together and then go spit in Old Scratch’s eye.

“How long do I have, Doc?”

“That depends.”

“On where I end up and whether or not I have access to any more of the nectar what brung me here. Correct?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“How long with the best of care and nary another drop of demon rum?”

“A year. Possibly eighteen months.”

“And how long with continued pickling?”

“You’d be dead in three months. I’m sorry, Mr. Kent.”

“Sorry? Sorry? Why, Doc, you couldn’t have brought me a better gift if you were Santa Claus and this was Christmas morning.”

Kent smiled. Kent winked. Kent could have kissed him.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Trisha Marx

Just when I thought I’d never hear from John Faith again, the letter came. I knew it was from him even before I ripped open the envelope.

Dear Trisha,

I don’t have many friends, so I’m not very good at saying good-bye. Maybe this isn’t the best way to say it to you, but it’s my way and I hope you won’t mind.

Thank you for being my friend when I needed a friend the most. I’ll never forget you, Trisha.

Good luck. And don’t ever stop caring.

Your friend,

John

It made me bawl like a baby. Right away I took it upstairs and locked it in my treasure chest, where I keep all the stuff that means the most to me. I read it once more first. I’ll never forget you, John, I thought. Don’t you ever stop caring, either.

That night, when Daddy came home from work, I told him about the baby and that I wanted to have it and keep it. He was pretty upset at first, but he didn’t have a hemorrhage like I’d thought he would. Actually, he was pretty cool about it. He asked if Anthony was gonna marry me, and I said I didn’t know about that yet, which kind of surprised me because until that very minute I’d been so sure I wanted Anthony to stay out of my life for good, particularly after what that asshole brother of his tried to do to Ms. Sixkiller. Daddy said that, well, whatever happened I wouldn’t have to raise the kid by myself — I could stay right here at home and he’d help me, if that was the way things worked out. Yeah, pretty cool. He stays out all night gambling too much and works too hard and sometimes I think he’s like the Bitch and doesn’t give a shit if I live or die, but I guess he really does love me after all.

One thing I didn’t tell him about: the baby. I won’t tell anyone until the time comes, not even Selena. It’s my secret and I’m not gonna share this one.

If it’s a boy he’ll be named John, and if it’s a girl she’ll be called Faith.

Audrey Sixkiller

I’ve been to see Dick several times now at the county correctional facility. At first our meetings were awkward; he wouldn’t look me in the eye and what little conversation we had was limited to neutral topics — my teaching and volunteer work, how Mack was adjusting to living with me. But at the end of each session he asked me to please come back, with a kind of desperation in his voice, and I couldn’t have refused him even if I’d wanted to. He has no one else. In all of Pomo, in the entire time since his wife left him, he’s had no one but me. And it wasn’t until now, when it’s too late, that he realized it.

There’s a hard irony in that, and in the fact that our roles have been reversed. He needs me now, but I no longer need him. I still care about him, and part of me will always love him, yet the feelings are detached, heavy with sadness but without yearning. It’s over. It would have been over even if there weren’t bars and steel mesh separating us. Indians are as blind as whites sometimes, but when we do see, we see more clearly than anyone. And we know better than anyone how to make compromises and adjustments, how to live with loss, how to channel feelings and be satisfied with less than we hope for. There is no self-pity in that; it’s a simple statement of fact. I would be all right. Continue to try to make life better for my people, and my own life would be better for the effort. Someday, perhaps, I’ll meet someone new to need and love, and who will need and love me in return. I think if this happens he’ll be red, or more red than white, but in any case it won’t matter. What’s important is that then the long nights won’t be lonely anymore.

I told some of this to Dick the last time I saw him. He said he understood and I think he does. It was the first time we’ve been able to talk about what matters to both of us — a good omen for him, too. Jail has been difficult for him, and prison will be twice as bad, but he takes full responsibility for his actions; the bitterness he feels is mostly toward himself. He won’t be the same man when he’s free again, or necessarily a better man, but he will be a wiser one.

His one blind spot is John Faith’s role in all that happened. He’s said more than once, with anger in his voice, that if John Faith had not come to Pomo there wouldn’t have been nearly as much trouble. Deep down he may even believe that if it weren’t for John Faith, he wouldn’t have killed Storm.

But he’s wrong. What Dick doesn’t understand is that John Faith is not guilty of anything other than poor judgment. He isn’t a poison-maker; he’s another victim, in a way the most tragic victim of all.

He can’t help that he was born a catalyst. Or do anything about it other than destroy himself, and he isn’t made that way. Hope hasn’t died in him yet. Neither has a streak of idealism. That’s why he keeps moving from place to place. It’s what makes him both crave human contact and shy away from it. It’s what makes him run.

John Faith is looking for a place where enough people can see past the outer man to the one who lives inside; a place where he’ll be accepted for what he is, not what he appears to be. He’s looking for what he’s never had and wants more than anything else.

He’s looking for a home.

And what he keeps finding, wherever he goes, is a wasteland of strangers.