camp didn't do much to unscramble his brains."
This disgusted me. I said, “So he was a loose end that you didn't mind terminating with prejudice.” I hoped he would make a move on me. Give me the
justification. My blood boiled.
He quietly took another sip of his drink. “I'm an old man. I should let you believe what you want, even if you do plan to arrest me for a fifty-year-old
murder I didn't commit. But like cops in general, Chuck, you irritate the hell out of me with your arrogance. So maybe I should just tell you because you
won't like it.”
I waited while he struck a pose, propping his boot on the arm of a soiled easy chair. I responded with my own look of determination. A silence hung between
us.
“My daddy didn't kill him,” I said firmly.
A smile spread across Uncle Matt's face that truly irked me. Four days of caffeine and nicotine had corroded my better nature. I kicked the drink out of
his hand, made a lunge at him, and shot a roundhouse right
at him that grazed his jaw. We tumbled onto the floor, a jumble of flying elbows, knuckles, knees and fingernails.
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I let up immediately when I felt the gun being pressed into the soft flesh under my jaw. Uncle Matt had a wild look in his eyes. I didn't move.
He was out of breath, trembling beneath me. “You should use your head a little more, Chuck, and your emotions less.”
I got off him. Slowly. He sprang up, keeping the gun trained on my head. He was surprisingly spry. It was my gun in his hands.
“The safety's off,” I cautioned him.
“I noticed. Planning to shoot me were you?”
I looked at his worn carpet.
“Your daddy should have destroyed that letter,” he said, sounding bitter. “I guess he musta hung onto it as insurance. Make sense. It shifts the blame
pretty squarely onto me.”
I felt startled. “What are you saying?”
“Let it go, Chuck. I'm telling you, just walk away from this. It's all in the past.”
He could read my expression that I could not, that the disloyal and distressing idea that my father had killed a
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