#64 Kevin

Pushkin. Hey everyone, today's episode is a special one, but at the same time, it does deal with mental illness and children in distressing situations. So, take care when listening. You've reached Jackie, you've made me a message. Do plan, listen, mind, massage. Jackie, I haven't heard from you in a while. I thought maybe the adoration of American candidates isn't enough for you. So, I wanted you to hear all the peoples of the world, all over the world, who want to hear your voice again. Here are a few of them, Jackie. Jackie, my name is Jangoes. I am from Cyprus, which is mega far away from where you're from. Jackie, Jackie, Jackie. This is Tracy, recording a voice message from London, England. Hello Jackie, even here in Little Switzerland, the despair is great. Did Jackie, this was a song from Istanbul. You are the only person who makes me laugh out loud. You should definitely come back. You are the highlight of the show. It means nothing without you. Come back. No matter what, you can just do it. Love from Alteiro, New Zealand, Kini Shalton, you have a lovely wrist of your day now. And this is Jonathan from England, wishing you a Merry St. Peppens, that, hello? I thought you picked up. From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Kevin. Right after the break. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm Drew Broussard, host of The Lit Hub Podcast. Every Friday, I take you behind the scenes at Lit.Hub, chatting with staff, writers, and other literary figures about everything going on in the literary world. Find us now, anywhere you get your podcasts. Kevin's email doesn't begin with any small talk. No long-time listener, first-time writer, preamble. He gets right into it. My little brother and I grew up destitute Kevin writes, in a public housing project in Sacramento. He goes on to say that life back then was only made bearable by the presence of two boys who live next door. And this is why he's writing. Kevin hasn't seen them in over 30 years, but he still hasn't forgotten them. The two boys, his friends, Jason and Gerald. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, great. The path that led him to Jason and Gerald is long and circuitous. Kevin begins the tale back in the third grade, sitting in class, reading. I would reading a book on the Gremlins. Based on the movie. Yeah, the cover was the theatrical poster of the movie. And I remember it during that moment that the teacher just said, hey, we got to go to the principal's office. And when you're a kid, that's kind of memorable because I thought initially I was in serious trouble. When Kevin arrived at the principal's office, his mom was there, surrounded by his five siblings. She explained that she was leaving their father and taking them all with her. So my dad has always been a real imposing, frightening figure because he would be everybody in family if you didn't really obey his commands. I never thought that he was malicious, but that he beat us because we screwed up somehow one way or another. So he would whip us with a metal clothes hanger, for example, or he would pinch us. And when he pinched us, it would go through the clothing and it would leave like half dollar sized welts of blue and purple and greenish colors. One day, a neighbor alarmed by a loud argument between Kevin's parents, phoned the police, and Kevin's father was arrested. He spent several days in jail, and when he returned home, he seemed different. We didn't have the word mentally ill back then, but we just talked amongst ourselves that he became crazy. And by crazy, I mean like really crazy. Whatever he endured in jail must have been so traumatic for my dad. And he invented a word at the time that everything was dirty. The dirty fixation began as soon as his father arrived back home from jail. The first thing he did upon his return was to ask for a box. He threw every article of clothing he was wearing inside. Then, standing naked before the family, he instructed his eldest son to throw the clothes away. And he goes up, he takes a shower. And when he comes back down, he sees that my older bro brought back the box. He was telling my bro that why do you bring the box back? Because the box is dirty. But more importantly, how did you toss out the dirty clothes? And my bro said he just grabbed it from the box and tossed it out. Basically, indicating to my dad that my bro touched the clothing himself. And my dad just went berserk and he just beat my bro on the spot right there. But that was the beginning of this crazy phase where my dad just completely lost it. His dad's new obsession only increased the tension between Kevin's parents. And every time they had arguments, we had no clue what they were talking about. If you could just spoke in Vietnamese and although that was my first native language, there was a time where my dad thought that we weren't learning English well enough. He forbade the usage of Vietnamese in the house. Then again, if he heard anybody utter a single word of Vietnamese, he would beat us. And so we dropped that quickly. But one of these arguments precipitated with my dad grabbing a cleaver. And he throws it across the room. And no one in particular, but it lashed itself into the wall. It wasn't long after that that Kevin, his mom and his siblings found themselves standing in the principal's office. We went from the principal's office straight to what I now know as a woman's shelter. Do you remember that first night that you spent there? Oh yeah, it was great. It just felt exciting. You wouldn't know anything imposing about the shelter until you leave. That's when you see the high fences with a barbed wire over the top. It looks like a prison, but it was great inside. There was a giant playground or tricycles. There was a walk in pantry that myself and my brother really loved. If he could, you could walk in and there are all these snacks and instant noodles. But after a few weeks of feasting on instant noodles, my mom just suddenly gather all of us. And she had a paper grocery bag. She just, tercely explains to us that two of us, two of the six of us kids will have to return to my dad. She can't take care of all of us. She cannot keep all of us. And she said, she wrote six of our names on pieces of paper. And she put all of our names in this paper bag. And she's going to draw two names and the two names will be two kids that have to return to my dad. And I just remember my name with the first name to be drawn. And I was just shocked. I don't know. At the time, I felt, I mean, there were six of us, two names were to be drawn. I just thought that my odds were somewhat reasonable. But looking back at it, I feel like my mom just rigged the whole thing because she couldn't just say outright. I want you, Kevin, and I want your little bro to go back to your dad because I feel that the younger ones won't be able to cope well. Your dad's not going to be able to take care of them. As she wanted to keep my older bro, he was just the oldest one, the favorite one. The plan, as established by the drawing of names from the paper bag, was that Kevin's oldest brother and the three youngest kids would stay with their mom. While Kevin and his middle brother, Tony, would go live with their dad. At the moment, she drew my name. I lost my mom, my siblings, and what hurt just as much was losing my older bro. And I looked up to him, I would ask him all kinds of questions, everything from life to school, what color you see when you die. And I still remember his answer because he said, she don't see any color when you're dead. But I asked him, what does that mean? What is the color of no color, the black or the white? He said, no, it's neither it's no color. To lose him in that one fell swoop when my mom pulled out my name, let alone knowing that you have to go back to your dad who you're super afraid of. When she drew my name, I remember I wasn't the only one who was crying, we all cried. We all cried. Kevin now has three kids of his own, and in raising them, he thinks back on that moment. Their hamster died, they were crying, and my partner was telling me, oh, they're just kids. They're just kids and they don't really mean it. When she said that, I remember I cried around the same age when my name was drawn from a paper bag, and I cried it was still the deepest cry I ever had in my life. So I just remembered, no, I got a 10 to my kids. I buried a hamster in a backyard, set a proper tombstone and have a good farewell. I don't think their cries are going to be any lighter than their future cries when they're adults. I don't think so. For the next several years, Kevin had almost no contact with his mom and siblings. He says his mom would sometimes drop off food at his dad's place, but she was never allowed inside. Kevin was eight and Tony was six. On the night they went back to live with their dad at his apartment in a public housing project. I remember he was drinking. He's always drinking. I mean, I've never seen him drink water in my life. He's always drinking beer and eating peanuts. And that was actually what he was doing when we came back in the middle of the living room floor. Although the living room contained a big fluffy couch and some school desks, their father wanted Kevin and Tony to join him on a piece of cardboard he laid on the cold linoleum floor. It turned out that since they'd last seen him, their father's obsession had only intensified. My dad set some rules. He said that he'll never touch these desks or the couch because they're now dirty. And we weren't going to question him. We didn't want to get beaten. So we ended up doing exactly that. A lot of these areas around the entire apartment just became dirty untouchable. Over time, a layer of dust accrued everywhere that we were not allowed to touch or walk through. I got this pen where a thick pen with a different colored tabs on the top where you can change from black to blue to red. I remember those. It was a really ill-deprized possession of mines. And I remember my dad, my bro and I were on our living room floor again. And my bro was holding the pen. He was trying to change one of the colors. But it longed out of his hands and twirled around and it eventually settled a few feet away from him in this dirty zone. And at that moment that happened as an eight-nine-year-old, I just knew that my pen was gone. Even though it's literally just three feet away from us. My bro and I looked at each other. We both looked at my dad and my dad just gave us that kind of solemn shake of his head like, I'm sorry boys, but that's a terrible loss. So you would just see the pen sitting there? Yeah. And then it would be absorbed by the dust over time. It would just become covered with dust itself. Even when their father wasn't home, Tony and Kevin didn't dare step into the dirty zones. I think we were also afraid because if you ventured into one dirty area, you would kind of leave like literal footprints into that dusty area. It would be pretty obvious. And so I remember one time a policeman entered our home because there was some kind of robbery and the cop was trying to find his person. And I remember his face the moment he stepped in like holy crap. Like he was asking me, you guys live here? And he was trying to search the house and I was pleading with him. I was like, please don't go there. Don't open that door and be that desicclycate with part of the dirty zone. And I didn't want to get in trouble. And thankfully I remember the cop just act we asked. When Kevin speaks of that time in his life, it says an accumulation of losses, the loss of his brothers and sister, his mom, the loss of all the rules that made reality reality, which is why he still remembers the one real gain from that time. Friends, those boys Jason and Gerald. They were a white family living with their single mom. Jason was witty and funny. Gerald was kind of goofy looking, but lovable. Gerald was Tony's age. Jason was Kevin's. They had video games and a mom who was nice to them. Every morning we wake up, we go outside, just yell out, Jason, Gerald, what do you up to? And he would come back out, groggy-eyed, wiping their eyes. We would just hang out all the time. In a life that was filled with significant, often traumatic events, the time Kevin and his brothers spent with Jason and Gerald was notable for just how unnotable it was. It was simple and fun. It was time spent just being a kid, building secret passageways out of cardboard boxes, racing bugs through obstacle courses, and climbing the highway retention wall to watch cars speed by. They swam at the public pool. They played with firecrackers blowing up snapple bottles in the park. Then there were the comics Kevin made. It might have been a smorgasbord of different characters I drew at the time, like one of the teenage mutant injured turtles or Batman or Bart and Garfield. We're all four of them in the same comic, who knew they offered me a quarter for every comic book I drew and gave it to them. So I did that and I used the quarters to buy myself candy. Hanging out with them was always a blast for 12 hours a day. Did you ever have friends like that before? No, no. And it helped, it helped soften, I bro a nice, quite situation living with a dad that we can hang out with Jason and Gerald. Jason and Gerald were the only people with a window onto Kevin and Tony's lives. Quite literally, their apartment window looked directly in on Kevin and Tony's window. I remember one time I broke and I would take a bath and we didn't have towels and we were shivering and we ran back to our bedroom. And we were trying to put on our clothing, but it's really hard to put on clothing when your body is wet. And the next day Jason and Gerald would come up to us and say, hey, why were you and Tony dancing on your bed naked? Why didn't you guys have towels? I don't know, we just didn't have towels. You know, we didn't have a lot of things at kids. We didn't have a refrigerator. That's the wild one, that's hard to imagine. But the refrigerator would part of the dirty zone. And the refrigerator worked? I think it was plugged in, yeah, we just couldn't use it. And so whenever we purchased food, we would have to consume it within that day, including a gallon of milk. My dad believed in giving us milk. And I remember my dad thought he had a genius idea. He didn't want to waste any of the milk. So he told me in my bro, just jog and place outside so that we would want to drink more milk. And that gym boat very well and we ended up vomiting on milk out there. I imagine if Gerald and Jason had been watching from their window, they'd have seen their little friends looking like they were in some milk sponsored version of boot camp. But no matter what unbelievable things they saw and no matter what unbelievable things Kevin told them about off-limit refrigerators or pans or couches, they didn't belittle him, didn't tease him. They accepted him. They never, they never doubted me when I told them these things. I did wholeheartedly believed it. At a time when Kevin and his brother felt so doubtful of their own reality, so isolated, Jason and Gerald were not only allies, but a check on their sanity. They were always there until the day they weren't. Tony and I would go home one day and they were gone. They were just completely gone. Their home was cleared out. Kevin's father said that Jason and Gerald's mom had died. And so that very same afternoon, the boys grandparents came and took Jason and Gerald away to live with them. Our friendship just suddenly got severed. There was no farewell or anything like that. We just went from hanging out all the time, being best buddies. To one day, just not even seeing them. People had left Kevin's life before, but Gerald and Jason didn't leave. They vanished. And when someone vanished in the early 1990s, they vanished. No cell phones, no emails. But the boys were always with him. Like in college, when Kevin's father died, his thoughts turned back to Jason and Gerald, how they must have felt losing their mom. Kevin's an adult now with a family and a career in biotech. Yet any time he's introduced to a Jason or a Gerald, his mind always leaps back to his Jason, his Gerald. So now, 30 years later, Kevin wants to find them. The two boys who are the only witnesses to the hardest part of his and his brother, Tony's life. I've always wondered about them and where do you up to? Are they all right? How are they doing first and foremost? Did they get over that kind of grief and loss? Because I can't even imagine losing your, your sole parent at that age. Because they always referred to themselves as white trash. They called themselves that. They did. Yeah. Always in a joking way. But every time I read about, like for example, the opioid epidemic where a lot of rural whites were hammered. Sometimes I wonder, are Jason and Gerald okay? Do you ever wonder if they think about you as well, if they think about you and your brother? I do wonder about that. Yeah, I do wonder about that. But all of that is secondary. If they're doing all right, I think that will warm up my heart pretty well. If they're not doing all right, I want to see if I can help them out. You're not the minimum. Maybe just say hi. They're just never forgotten about them. And if they've forgotten about myself or Tony, you're not spying. That's fine. I just be just as happy to find out that they're doing all right. The normal friends would probably want, right? The problem is they were always just Jason and Gerald from across the way. Kevin doesn't know their last name. And their mother's name has also been lost to time. And although he does know the brothers went to live with their grandparents. I don't even know where the grandparents reside except for one comment that Jason made a long time ago where he said that whenever he visits his grandparents, they would burn pine cones to keep warm. And that's why Kevin has come to me with just the names Jason and Gerald hoping I can help. Because I thought that your superpower investigative sleuthing abilities are going to be able to track them down again. After the break, my superpower investigative sleuthing abilities are put to the test. I'm Drew Broussard, host of the LitHub podcast. Every Friday, I take you behind the scenes at Literary Hub, chatting with staff, writers and other literary figures about everything going on in the literary world. Find us now anywhere you get your podcasts. Kevin remembers his own address from back then. And clicking around on Google Maps, he's able to determine which house was Jason and Gerald. But when my producer, Klee Lynn, I start digging. The only records we find are Topsy Turvy. Dozens of people listed under the same address, the timelines overlapping and confusing ways. So without much else to go on, Klee Lynn skims the records, searching for any single women who lived at Jason and Gerald's apartment number in the early 90s. Then, using the surname she finds, she starts styling. Hello. Hi, is this Jason? Hello. Is this Jason? Oh, you got to always know. You know what to do later. Wow, I really fell for that voice mail. Hi. My name is Klee Loholt. I'm looking for a Jason who has a brother named Gerald. Klee LaFone's dozens and dozens of numbers, leaving messages for Jason's and Gerald's across the nation. Many of the numbers she tries are disconnected entirely. We're sorry. You have reached the number that has reached the number that has reached the number that has reached the number. We're sorry. We're sorry. We're sorry. And while some Gerald's and Jason's do answer the phone, No, I had a dead being juice. No, ma'am, I want to raise the taxes. They're never the ones who are looking for. Unless you're giving away millions of dollars and then I can make it be me. No, ma'am, I'm sorry. Wish I could help you. When Jason does helpfully text that there's another guy with the same name a few towns over, I've spent a night in jail for a warrant in his name he writes. Too bad your podcast isn't about that. I figure the local elementary school might have Jason and Gerald's last name on file. So I give them a call and I'm put on hold. It might give me a chance to do a little bit of freestyle and while I'm waiting. Jason, he's got a brother, Gerald. Thanks for holding. Thankfully, I'm interrupted by the receptionist. She sends me to the district office. Visit our website at htpps.co.n forward slash forward slash. And all the district office has to offer is a web address straight out of the mid 90s. We search obituaries thinking we might find one for Jason and Gerald's mom. We post in neighborhood Facebook groups. We try phoning neighbors messaging old classmates, submitting a research request at the public library. Nothing comes of any of it. After two months of dead ends, Kevin returns to the housing project to look for new leads. One of the last times he went back was to show his wife and three kids where he grew up. But the kids were too scared of the neighborhood to get out of the car. This time he goes alone and it's while walking by his old building that Kevin has a realization. For Jason and Gerald to have seen him and Tony through the window getting dressed without towels that day, their address would have to have been not the one he'd originally told me, but actually one apartment over. And that new fact makes all the difference. Amazingly, we've been able to triangulate who these guys are, who Jason and Gerald. Really? Yeah. No way. Yes. Oh. But just when you whack a mole one problem in this life, a new problem rears its ugly mole head. Even though we found Jason and Gerald, we're not hearing back from Jason and Gerald. After sending both brothers letters, Gerald bounces back and Jason's goes unanswered. I try Jason on LinkedIn, but still, nothing. Maybe the name Kevin no longer means anything to them. Maybe they forgot the friendship altogether. I can't find a phone number for Gerald or Jason, but I do find one for Jason's wife. And so I leave her a voicemail. When I get no response, I try texting. Still no response. So I call again. And this time, the phone doesn't even ring. Fearing my number has been blocked, I ask Kevin to phone. But when he tries to leave a message. My name's Kevin. I've been shouted friends with Jason and his brother. Oh. I can even leave a voicemail. It's no longer feeling like Jason is simply forgotten. It feels like he emphatically doesn't want to talk. Although Jason's a no-go, I still have one more shot at reaching the younger brother, Gerald. He has a Facebook. So this is where I'm thinking like maybe the most direct way to do it would be for you to reach out. Yeah, I don't mind. It's just that I don't even have a Facebook account. But I can definitely make an account, I suppose. When we check back in the next day, Kevin tells me that he made a profile and added one single friend, Gerald. And then I just sent him a message. Are you the Gerald with the brother Jason? Does it Kevin with the little bro Tony? We just lived right across from each other and we were really good friends. And he just replied immediately. I'm Drew Broussard, host of the LitHub podcast. Every Friday, I take you behind the scenes at Literary Hub, chatting with staff, writers and other literary figures about everything going on in the literary world. Find us now anywhere you get your podcasts. It's been an eventful 24 hours for the first time in over 30 years. Kevin and his friend Gerald are back in touch. The two have been exchanging messages at a rapid pace since last night. I'm still digesting all this real time. Apparently Gerald is in the east coast right now. He's been homeless for three years. But he said that he's got no problems. Been staying out of trouble. He only smokes cigarettes and sparingly drinks. He stayed away from the hard drugs. Oh, and I wanted to talk to him over the phone because I'm just not a big fan of texting. But he said that he didn't have a cell phone. He lost it while traveling through Maryland. He only has access to Facebook Messenger, broader internet, while at the library. So yeah, he's just quite a bit to digest. He mentioned Jason. One of the first things Gerald did after hearing from Kevin was to message Jason. Gerald shared the message he sent his brother. I can just read it out. He said, how are you, brother? You won't believe this. Remember Tony and Kevin when we were living with mom and Sacramento as kids? They are reaching out to us to get to know us again and connect. We are catching up. It makes me so happy to talk to Kevin. It's crazy. Jason responded to his brother's message, saying he remembered Kevin and Tony fondly. It turns out he was well aware Kevin had been looking for him. He'd gotten all those messages left for his wife. But he didn't want to revisit that time. In the months to come, Kevin keeps the Messenger app on his phone. So he and his one Facebook friend can send long messages back and forth. And eventually, five months later. Hey, Gerald. Hey, Kevin. Gerald gets a new phone and a conversation is arranged. The last time we've ever heard each other, we were just kids. So 34 years ago, I remember exactly how you look. When you were a kid, you were slightly taller to me, black hair. You had a freckle. I think you had a freckle under your left eye. Yeah, I do. I'm actually looking at you right now through my mind. Remember when we hung out at your place? Oh my gosh. Yeah. We all we do is play video games. I remember you and Tony were so good at playing video games. Oh, I would watch you guys for hours one time. We had this game, Rygar. I remember Rygar. And for like four or five hours, you played it and you ended up beating it. And my jaw was just blurred. You know why though? We didn't have anything else to do me and Tony. Literally, we were just in that place, in that home and we didn't have anything. Oh, we knew that too. I remember you guys came over once, right? Yeah, yeah. It's crazy because I actually still remember the inside of your house. You remember like didn't it look crazy? It looked like it looked like a house. It looked like a cobweb. Yes, a haunted house because I remember it was dusty. Like not necessarily, not necessarily clean. Unclean is not the work, but it was like nobody lived there. You remember the backyard that we hung out? It had the clothes lines. Yeah, we'd swing on them. Yeah, they're gone now. I guess every unit has a dryer now. Wow. And everything seemed a whole lot smaller. He just surprised me. I just thought everything would weigh bigger, but I think we were just so small. You know, growing up with you, I always thought that you would become like a comic book artist, like a professional one. I mean, I would pay you a quarter of a piece for them because I liked them so much. I remember how you had always bugged me about, I want the next issue coming out. I want the next issue coming out. Yes, yes. Oh my gosh. You have no idea they were so good. They were so, so good. All these decades later, Gerald still remembers the specific Bart Simpson plot lines. There was an electrical monster that Bart made my... Oh, I just had a lot of old memory that I hadn't thought about. I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I had skills that I always thought of you too. Making friends with you guys was just a big breath of fresh air. I mean, at school, I was never able to make real friends. A lot of the kids were actually really mean. I got beat up a lot. But I had Kevin Tony cry across from me. I mean, those were my friends. Those were the only two friends I actually had growing up. I really, really never made that kind of connection again. How are you doing, man? Oh, I'm OK. I'm OK. I'm happy in life. Life isn't really what I thought it'd be, what it turned out to be, but it turned out OK. And I am myself and I'm happy. It's not like I'm living a life where I wake up and go to work and realize I'm unhappy, but just do the same thing every other day. I'm kind of just free and by myself now. You seem to be doing pretty resiliently. That's the word resilient, really. When you first become homeless, it's scary, you know? But it's kind of a adaptor dye kind of scenario. And one thing I found out about being homeless is it's a bit easier if you can blend in with other homeless people. If you can find an area that has resources and other homeless people, you're more likely to survive better and not be a target because it's pretty dangerous being homeless. People don't like homeless people. Did you find yourself targeted? Yes, a lot. I've gotten beat up a few times, but I've also been helped too. I've had a lot of Christians help me, which is something amazing. A lot of people help me on my way. Good people. Gerald had been living beneath an underpass in DC for about a year. But a few months ago, he decided to return home to California. I got into a point where I had no contact with my kids and I missed them and I just needed to see them. And I knew if I stayed gone, if I'm just out there in the world, I'll never have a relationship with my kids if I don't come back now. I need to see my boys. I need to tell them I love them. The strange thing is the very day that they initiated the sweeping of the homeless in DC was the day I had a bus ticket to come back to California. So I was getting on a bus right when the troops were coming into DC like the day. Gerald explains he'd started going to church with another friend who was homeless and that the church helped him scramble together enough money for a ticket back home to his kids. And I'm grateful that I was able to leave because I don't know what happened to all the homeless people. There were hundreds of homeless people when I was in DC all in that area and they were all dealing with the same thing. It was very sad to see some were genuinely crazy, some were playing the system and others were just emotionally distraught. Something happened in your family, like a kid died and they just couldn't pull themselves out. Can you say like what led you into that situation? Yeah, heartbreak and lack of family. My wife left me about four years ago now and honestly I just got to a point where I realized that if I didn't actually go away for a while, that her heart can mend where she can grow and become herself. So I needed to just leave the whole area and I need to do something for myself. I need to go see the world. I need to go walk. Is that how you traveled by walking? Mostly yeah. From state to state? Yeah. Well, I would get rides of course. I wouldn't hitchhike, I wouldn't put my thumb out. I would walk and eventually somebody would pull over and ask me if I need to ride. Gerald tells me that after his wife left him, he was living in his truck. But when he decided to leave California, he swapped cars with a friend. I traded him straight up for his jelopy car for my nice Toyota truck. I couldn't find work, I couldn't find a job, I couldn't find money for my gas tank. So I could either leave my truck on the side of the road and have it impounded in the law, so I could give it away to somebody I love and try to find my way on foot. So I chose to give it to my friend Josh. And I drove his car up through this year in Nevada's into Nevada. And then when it ran out of gas, I just started walking. For the next several years, Gerald traveled all over the country. From Nevada, he went to Kansas, then Oregon, Alaska, Tennessee, and eventually Washington, DC. And now he's back in California, spending most of his time camping. So I'm just sitting up on a mountain right now looking down at a river. Honestly, even being back in California, I kind of realized that I may end up staying homeless. I don't have a lot of options, but I realize I'm just happier being halfway out of the system or one foot in, one foot out, I guess. I'm more comfortable just being alone than in the crowd of people. So I being up here in the mountains where I'm at right now, it's just wonderful. I mean, there's nobody around, nobody. Gerald looks after his kids a few days every week, staying at his ex-wife's house. After a leaf to see them again, his two boys, seven and thirteen. And they're fine and they missed me. I would think that they would miss me. I mean, you can't. Yeah, you can't ever replace a parent. Something both Kevin and Gerald know all too well. I just remember taking that news that your mom had passed and that you two just gone, were coming back and Tony and I, we were both and we cried and we were hurt, broken. We lost our two best friends. They didn't even get to say goodbye. It was so suddenly. Oh, in one day. Yeah. And we were always wondering what happened to your mom, to you two. I could tell you the story when you started. As a kid, making sense of what happened, Kevin assumed maybe Jason and Gerald's mom had a heart attack. But Gerald says no, that his mom had a heroin addiction. When I was like six, it came across a leather glove with a needle inside the couch when I pulled up the couch cushion and I brought it to my mom and said, Mommy, what's this? And she slapped my hand and took it from me and she said, never touch that again. Don't dig in there. Okay, that's mom's that could poke you and hurt you. So I knew I knew about it, but I didn't know what it was exactly. And my mom would, she sleep a lot, a lot. Most of the time she just sleep on the couch downstairs. But when she was awake, she was a very good mom. She always cooked for me and Jason and we always had food. She was always looking for us. We're out too late. She didn't let nobody mess with us. My mom was good mom. Yeah, that's what I remember. The night as mom died, Gerald remembers hearing a thud upstairs, but he didn't think much of it. He and Jason were busy watching the Simpsons at the time. And not long after that, they went to bed. So I went and crawled into bed and Jason crawled into his bed and he went to sleep and I was lying there and I'm like, I can go see if I can go curl up to mom and her bed. So I got up and I went to my mom's room and I opened the door and she was laying face down on the ground, not moving. But I had seen that before. So I didn't think a lot. I didn't know anything was wrong. I was like seven, six somewhere in there. So I slowly closed the door really slowly because I didn't want to wake her up. And in the morning, me and my brother got ourselves ready for school and we walked to school. And while I was at school at about one o'clock in the afternoon, some cops came to my classroom. I thought I was in trouble because I hadn't been doing good in school. I thought I was about my grades actually and the cops brought me back to the house. And apparently my brother had come home from school early because he was feeling sick. And he found my mom face down on the ground and couldn't wake her up. So he went to a neighbor, Lloyd and Cheryl. They lived up the block and Lloyd came down and checked her pulse and looked at my brother and said she's dead. And I didn't even realize she was dead. I didn't know even when the cops brought me into the house and the houses filled with cops. And my grandparents are there. Nobody's told me what's happened. So I'm just looking at everybody and I'm wondering where mom is. And then a cop comes up to me and says we're going to take you to Burger King and get you something to eat. So a cop actually took me and my brother to Burger King in his cop car and bought us lunch. And I still didn't know what was going on. So I'm just gabbling to the cop like my very young seven year old self just talking, talking, talking like nothing's wrong. I remember asking the cop did he ever shoot anybody? He just said yeah, she's the bad people when he has to and he had a shotgun that was mounted long, close to the dash. And I thought it was so cool and my brother didn't say a word. And the cop starts crying. And he brought us back and nobody's talking to me at all. I'm like an insect on a wall or a fly like I just don't know. And so my grandparents tell us okay we got to go get inside the car. Grandpa has some things he has to do so we're going to take you to an Elizabeth's house for right now for a few days. So I got happy because I got to see my cousin Brian who was about my age and like I loved him. And when I get there my cousin Brian he knows what's going on, what happened. And he looks at me and he says, Gerald I want you to sleep in my bed. You kicked my bed, I'll sleep on the floor. And I said you don't have to do that. He said no you can just take it okay and I could see you sad. And then I sat down on the bed and that's when it hit me. That's when I realized that mom had died. And I start crying and crying. And I cried for hours and hours. And I cried myself to sleep. After all that my brother ended up becoming really quiet. He never really talked to me very much after that. And I don't know. It just seems like the world got a lot colder after that. Jason and Gerald spent the rest of their childhood with their maternal grandparents, living in the mountains. I asked Gerald if they ever had any contact with their dad. No he died before I was born. Oh I see I'm sorry. It's okay I never knew him so there's no effect you know. Yeah. By I do know a story my dad right before he died he asked my grandfather for $500 because he needed to buy a card so that he could go get this job. And my grandfather didn't believe him so he said no. And then the next day apparently a neighbor had come across my father's hanging body from a tree and called my grandfather and my grandfather cut him down and looked at his body on the ground and said what a waste. This is the same grandfather who about seven years later would become Gerald's guardian. Gerald says he could be strict. Got a military attitude and he was really a gruff on me. And Jason? Well just you? Not Jason so much. Well Jason was more like my grandfather than I was. Jason went into the military he did very good. He was in about eight years and went to Iraq twice and he did really well. Wow. Jason now lives in Arizona where he works in security. Kevin's happy to hear that his life seems stable. But Gerald and Jason's relationship never recovered from the death of their mom. In contrast Kevin and Tony have remained close. The Jason and Gerald haven't is hard for Kevin to hear. I hope that you can at least maintain a little bit of contact with Jason here and there. Yeah it's spotty but it is. It just is what it is. Some people they everybody's different. We all have our own special abilities. We all you know are good at our own good things. One thing my brother isn't so good at is dealing with the past memory of my mom's death. He kind of locked it away I feel. But it's his memories to keep you know and he doesn't want to dig him back up. And I think that's the big thing. If you ever see him again or communicate with him again, King let him know that. Yeah that never I never never forgot about you. Got a lot of time. Yeah. He's alright. He didn't want to talk about it. That's fine. He just wanted to let him know that. Yeah Tony and I were real real sad and I never forgot about him. I'll tell him. I'll tell him. I'll tell him. Gerald says he was just never like his brother and grandfather. Me I was the complete opposite. I was kind of the more like the free bird, the hippie I guess. Got into skateboarding. I always wanted to start a skateboarding company and design my own decks, do artwork through that. That's actually what I really wanted to do in life. But I kind of put it on a shelf just because of how everything turned out in life. But he says he did gift skateboards to each of his sons. And now when his younger son goes out to ride his bike, Gerald will use one of the boards to skate alongside him. Honestly I don't know what it really is to be a proper dad. I never had a dad. I had a grandpa who was kind of a dad and I learned some from him. But to be a dad is something I got to learn as I go along. I guess that's my biggest journey now. It's just to stay home, stay in my area and watch my kids grow. That's what I want to do. Do you think you're going to stick around? Yes. I'm done traveling now. So it feels like it's the end of something or the beginning of something new. When one thing ends, something else begins. Yeah. I'm 41 and this means I have half my life to live still. After my mom died, nobody in the family would talk about it. It was like my old past life and Sacramento had been erased. So having connected with Kevin, it's like validation that I did have a life for my mother died. Like I'm not the only one that remembers my mom. Yeah. Likewise Gerald, it means something to me too that I wasn't too crazy thinking about my shout. It was so much like someone else was thinking about it as well. That actually happened. Yeah. It actually happened. It's nice to know I'm not invisible. How's the year in a bit? We got to cash up and make a visit up there. Yes, you will have to come up. Yeah, it's never been to that area before. So it'll be a beautiful place. Yeah, it looks like it. You will love it. I promise Kevin. I'm sure I will. Okay. Bye. Bye Gerald. Kevin and I stay on the line to talk about everything Gerald shared. We harken back to what he said about not knowing how to be a dad and ask Kevin how he learned to be a dad. A lot of it, he says, comes from his partner. But also, he tried to define himself in opposition to his own dad. I didn't want to be feared. I wanted my kids to be able to trust me. I wanted to be warm and open to them. And good time with them. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to do everything to opposite what my own dad did. And I know I didn't walk away. Unscaved. Both me and my bro probably my entire family. I feel like sometimes I sort of like PTSD homes. Kevin tells me how when his kids joined Cub Scouts, he volunteered to be an assistance scout master. He had to go away on this weekend camping trip to be trained. When he got back home, he pulled into the garage. Everything in the house was quiet. I remember unloading the car and calling for my kids because I thought that they could help me set up the tent at the backyard to let the tent properly dry and all that. But there was no response. And I noticed that they were like in the living room or something like that. Playing board games. They kind of nodded at me. Like oh, that's home. And I just remember feeling like like immensely overwhelmed with sadness. I just remember sitting down in another room on the couch. It's being super removed. And even wondering about why I was feeling that emotion. And it took me a little while to process like why this black cloud just hanging around me. I guess ultimately what was going through my mind was I felt like. Like my family didn't really want me. And maybe I would envision that they would miss me and they would greet me and but because they didn't. I got that sensation that like I wasn't wanted. I didn't know how I was processing it but it reminded me of the time where I had my mom with her. My name was a paper bag. She chose me as the first kid I she didn't want. And it is integral. And it's not about how. But coming home to my dad. And looking at me like. Like he wished he had my older brother come home and stuff. And he was like, like he wished he had my older brother come home instead of me. And that was a feeling I got when I just got home from that camping trip. Like nobody wanted me. Yeah, yeah, it's a terrible feeling. I remember my partner. She came back out and she said, call me and I didn't know I was playing it to her but and I just told her I wasn't feeling well. And then me, my family, and her to room and be normal again and say, hey, what's everyone doing with game where you guys playing? And life was just carry on. This weekend Kevin is planning on driving out to the mountains to see Gerald to go camping and fishing. Gerald says the fish are jumping. It's the beginning of something new. Life carries on. Yeah. Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home. Now that the last month's rent is skiing with the damage deposit, take this moment to decide. If we meant it, if we tried, we felt around for five to five. For things that accidentally fell down. This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Calila Holt and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our supervising producer is Stevie Lay, editorial guidance from Emily Condon, special thanks to Chris Neary, Greta Cohn, Jake Harper, Lydia Jean Cot, and Kevin's brother Tony. Emma Munger mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Samson, and Bobby Lorde. Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions and Pottington Bear. Our theme song is by the Weaker Thands courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast or email us at heavyweightatpushkin.fm. We're taking a break for American Thanksgiving, but we'll be back in December with two more episodes of Heavyweight. Until that time, happy American Toi-Key Day. A gobble gobble to you and yours. I'm Drew Broussard, host of the LitHub Podcast. Every Friday, I take you behind the scenes at Literary Hub, chatting with staff, writers, and other literary figures about everything going on in the literary world. Find us now anywhere you get your podcasts. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.