The Blues & Billie Armstrong 58
HE SAYS YOUR NAME
Previously in The Blues & Billie Armstrong…
I was expecting some sort of legal document, but inside was a single folded piece of cheap typewriter paper like I remembered from my early days in the offices of the Call & Record. I unfolded it and saw a block of type in fading black ink. In effect, these were my father’s final words to his son.
I read through it three times. Maybe more. And the handwritten revisions in my father’s small, tight printing.
True, the booze was not enhancing my faculties, but this was a lot to process, well lubricated or not. I understood what the document meant on the surface—MIA not KIA. It took a few reads to recognize the terrible unavoidable implications: that my father had rewritten an official government press release and published a fake obituary, all in some desperate attempt either to hold on to my mother or punish her.