I always tell myself I want to know what happened on the day my father came home to fetch his gun at 3 A.M. and wound up getting arrested for 

assault with intent to kill. 

The day he lost his mind, I call it when I'm in a genteel mood. When he lost his shit, I say when I feel more vulgar. The day he tried to kill a man named Walter Suhaka, I say when I'm trying to be rational. There was a lot of tension in the house when he didn't come home the night before. As I remember it, I slept on his living room recliner to wait for it while my mother slept on the couch.

But among the papers my mother gave me almost forty years after the fact I found a letter to Judge Joseph Salerno, begging for some unspecified leniency. She mentioned how her husband "warned me not to call the police or he'd kill me (this in front of our then 9 1/2 year old son who 

kept a night vigel in the living room, waiting for Daddy to come home."

Maybe I thought I could save him. Maybe, in writing this, I think I still can.

1. STEP ASIDE, SON
2. 8/15/73: THE ESSAY
3. THINGS I'D SAY TO MY DAD ABOUT THE GUN
4. THE HITS KEEP COMING
5. THE GREATEST MINDS OF MY GENERATION