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“So you’re the reporter, huh? The better half said you’d be around. Come on in and sit down. You want coffee? A drink? No?”
Roger Tompkins finished his introduction and allowed the lady in. He set about making himself a respectable drink. He was a thin, animated man in a timeworn, sharkskin suit that was missing a jacket button. A hideous maroon tie struggled from the front of his jacket like a rumpled snake, then slithered back into his vest.
“That was terrible, just a terrible thing about Bill,” he said. “I heard about it on the radio on my way home from work. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I had just had lunch with him the week before.” He ran his fingers through his thinning hair, dislodging a dry snow drift of dandruff.
“What did you know about him,” the reporter asked.
“You’re talking about Bill, right?” Tompkins looked uncertain. “Sure, ‘course you are.” He smiled as if covering a grimace. “You’ll have to forgive me for acting like this, I’m still a little shook up. Man,” he breathed, “to have something like that happen to you. I guess his old man was finally right about him, in the end.”
The reporter pounced. “What’s this about his father?”
“You haven’t talked to him, yet?” Tompkins looked surprised. “Just as well, I guess. He’d probably slam the door in your face. Bill and his father never got on too well. I guess you’ve caught that by now.”
“Bill’s Dad was a little wacko. Probably seemed perfectly normal to the folks he hung out with, real Bible Boosters. I talked to him a few years back, right after Bill’s little girl was born. I knew Bill wouldn’t talk to him, but I thought I’d try to patch things up. He was my friend and his only grandchild had just been born.
“I went to his house and rang the doorbell. When he answered the door, he didn’t look like the devil, just an ordinary old guy with a bald head and false teeth. He didn’t recognize me.
“ ‘Yes,’ he said.
“I told him who I was and why I was there. Soon’s I mentioned Bill’s name his eyes bugged right out behind his glasses and his face turned red like someone had yanked his tie into a knot.
“ ‘He’s no son of mine,’ he told me. ‘Not since he started writing all that crap. He was raised better than to blaspheme the name of the Savior. He’s never had a thought for me or his mother since he was seduced by the devil and I threw him out of the house. Seventeen years old and he had already brought shame down on my home with his heresy. I’ve prayed for him, but he’s bound to burn in hell.’ Then he slammed the door in my face. To me he said these things. I think the fact that Bill never buried the hatchet with his father is what drove his wife away, and sent his little girl into the drug scene. Poor guy. Always had time for everyone else, but never his own. Hey, I’m not a terribly religious man myself, but it looks like Bill’s dad might have been right, in a way.”
Tompkins picked up his Scotch and water with a trembling hand and swallowed it at a gulp. “But who would have expected him to go like that? Wow!”