I sat on the ground with my legs crossed. I didn’t even straighten my back. I slouched. They had to bend down to punch me in the jaw. One of them got on his knees to do it. They took turns. They tried to get me to my feet; I let my body go limp. One of them had to hold me up, but I had become slippery and slid greasily through their fingers back onto the ground. I was still taking a beating, and my head was stunned by strong fists pounding at it, but the pummeling was sloppy, confused. Eventually my plan worked: they gave up. They asked what was wrong with me. They asked me why I wouldn’t fight back. Maybe the truth was I was too busy fighting back tears to be fighting back people, but I didn’t say anything. They spat at me and then left me to contemplate the color of my own blood. Against the white of my shirt, it was a luminous red.

When I got home, I found Dad standing by my bed, staring witheringly at the newspaper clippings on the walls.

“Jesus. What happened to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“No, I want to see what happens to blood when you leave it overnight.”

“Sometimes it turns black.”

“I want to see that.”

I was just about to rip down the pictures of Uncle Terry when Dad said, “I wish you’d take these down,” so of course I kept them right where they were. Then Dad said, “This isn’t who he was. They’ve turned him into a hero.”

Suddenly I found myself loving my degenerate uncle again, so I said, “He is a hero.”

“A boy’s father is his hero, Jasper.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Dad turned and snorted at the headlines.

“You can’t know what a hero is, Jasper. You’ve grown up in a time when that word has been debased, stripped of all meaning. We’re fast becoming the first nation whose populace consists solely of heroes who do nothing but celebrate each other. Of course we’ve always made heroes of excellent sportsmen and -women- if you perform well for your country as a long-distance runner, you’re heroic as well as fast- but now all you need to do is be in the wrong place at the wrong time, like that poor bastard covered by an avalanche. The dictionary would label him a survivor, but Australia is keen to call him a hero, because what does the dictionary know? And now everyone returning from an armed conflict is called a hero too. In the old days you had to commit specific acts of valor during war; now you just need to turn up. These days when a war is on, heroism seems to mean ‘attendance.’ ”

“What’s this got to do with Uncle Terry?”

“Well, he falls into the final category of heroism. He was a murderer, but his victims were well chosen.”

“I don’t get it.”

Dad turned toward the window, and I could tell by the way his ears wiggled up and down that he was talking to himself in that weird way where he did the mouth movements but kept all the sound in. Finally he spoke like a person.

“People don’t understand me, Jasper. And that’s OK, but it’s sometimes irritating, because they think they do. But all they see is the façade I use in company, and in truth, I have made very few adjustments to the Martin Dean persona over the years. Oh sure, a touch-up here, a touch-up there, you know, to move with the times, but it has essentially remained intact from day one. People are always saying that a person’s character is unchangeable, but mostly it’s the persona that doesn’t change, not the person, and underneath that changeless mask exists a creature who’s evolving like crazy, mutating out of control. I tell you, the most consistent person you know is more than likely a complete stranger to you, blossoming and sprouting all sorts of wings and branches and third eyes. You could sit beside that person in an office cubicle for ten years and not see the growth spurts going on right under your nose. Honestly, anyone who says a friend of theirs hasn’t changed in years just can’t tell a mask from an actual face.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Dad walked to my bed and, after doubling over the pillow, lay down and made himself comfortable.

“I’m saying it’s always been a little dream of mine for someone to hear firsthand about my childhood. For instance, did you know that my physical imperfections almost did me in? You’ve heard the expression ‘When they made him, they threw away the mold’? Well, it was as if someone picked up a mold that had already been thrown away, and even though it was cracked and warped by the sun and ants had crawled inside it and an old drunk had urinated on it, they reused it to make me. You probably didn’t know either that people were always abusing me for being clever. They’d say, ‘You’re too clever, Martin, too clever by half, too clever for your own good.’ I smiled and thought they must be mistaken. How can a person be too clever? Isn’t that like being too good-looking? Or too rich? Or too happy? What I didn’t understand was that people don’t think; they repeat. They don’t process; they regurgitate. They don’t digest; they copy. I had only a splinter of awareness back then that no matter what anybody says, choosing between the available options is not the same as thinking for yourself. The only true way of thinking for yourself is to create options of your own, options that don’t exist. That’s what my childhood taught me and that’s what it should teach you, Jasper, if you hear me out. Then afterward, when people are talking about me, I’m not going to be the only one to know they are wrong, wrong, wrong. Get it? When people talk about me in front of us, you and I will be able to give each other sly, secret looks across the room, it will be a real giggle, and maybe one day, after I’m dead, you’ll tell them the truth, you’ll reveal everything about me, everything I’ve told you, and maybe they’ll feel like fools, or maybe they’ll shrug and go, ‘Oh really, interesting,’ then turn back to the game show they were watching. But in any case, that’s up to you, Jasper. I certainly don’t want to pressure you into spilling the secrets of my heart and soul unless you feel it will make you richer, either spiritually or financially.”

“Dad, are you going to tell me about Uncle Terry or not?”

“Am I- what do you think I’ve just been saying?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Well, sit down and shut up and I’ll tell you a story.”

This was it. Time for Dad to open up and spill his version of the Dean family chronicles, his version that was contrary to the mythologizing gossip of the nation. So he started to talk. He talked and talked nonstop until eight in the morning, and if he was breathing underneath all those words, I couldn’t see it or hear it but I sure could smell it. When he’d finished, I felt as though I’d traveled through my father’s head and come out somehow diminished, just slightly less sure of my identity than when I went in. I think, to do justice to his unstoppable monologue, it’d be better if you heard it in his own words- the words he bequeathed me which have become my own, the words I’ve never forgotten. That way you get to know two people for the price of one. That way you can hear it as I did, only partially as a chronicle of Terry Dean, but predominantly as a story of my father’s unusual childhood of illness, near-death experiences, mystical visions, ostracism, and misanthropy, followed closely by an adolescence of dereliction, fame, violence, pain, and death.

Anyway, you know how it is. Every family has a story like this one.