The first time my brother ran away from home he was sixteen, and now he’s done it again, only this time he’s packing a pistol.  Never mind that fifty years have passed since his first great escape, or that he acquired a wife, kids and grandchildren and operated a successful business in the meantime.  His wife and business are in Sacramento, and his new address is Vast, Rugged Forest, Fort Bragg, California where he lives in a trailer with eleven dogs.

I was in third grade when he and a high school buddy decided to skip their geometry homework and jump a freight train. They ended up in Texas, and although this stunt must have caused an ungodly uproar at our house, all I remember is my mother leaving for a few days to bring him home.  My memory of him joining the Army in the mid-Sixties is more clear.  He knew he was going to be drafted and would probably be shipped to Vietnam, and he thought he might get a break if he enlisted.  Ultimately, he did luck out; he was sent to South Korea and eventually earned an honorable discharge.  But before that happened, he heard the lonesome call of another train whistle. 

His AWOL incident earned him disciplinary time at the Presidio in San Francisco, but the truth is, I had never paid much attention to my brother’s acts of rebellion or the inevitable consequences.  We were eight years apart in age, for one thing, but any youthful transgressions he may have committed or any grief the rest of the family may have suffered just didn’t faze me.  I flat out idolized him, and all I really remembered were the times he spent with me.

Despite the turmoil of his early years and beyond, and despite the girls who hung around mooning over him (it’s true that ladies love outlaws), he let me tag along when he and a girlfriend went bowling, when he delivered newspapers on his afternoon route or when he hung out with his pals Andy and Leroy.  He knew I loved horses, and he’d take me, in whatever souped up car he was driving at the moment, to a local riding stable.  I have a faded Polaroid that shows me posing blissfully next to my rented palomino while my brother, looking suitably James Dean-ish, slouches nearby.  

After he moved to the mountains, he occasionally called me late in the day after his second or third beer.  He’d ask how my husband and kids were doing, and we’d talk about his dogs, or the weather where he was, and I imagined his isolation as we talked.  Was this what he’d been searching for, ever since he jumped on that freight train? 

But then something changed. The phone calls stopped coming and emails with a decidedly negative theme began to take their place.  I knew my brother had moved to the far right in recent years, but the photo of a flock of pigeons, with the caption, “Waiting for a Statue of Obama,” was not the kind of mail I wanted to find in my inbox.  My kids think of their uncle as “eccentric”, but I started wondering if this time my brother had run away for good.

When I wass twenty-five, my father and I had a bitter argument over my boyfriend, a free spirit who practiced yoga, studied Zen and didn't eat meat. He had a degree in biochemistry, but he was living in a shabby apartment and working part time as an office clerk. My father, a blue-collar man who labored hard all his life, didn't like my boyfriend’s alternative lifestyle or breezy work ethic. On the day we argued, my father said harsh things about him, and I lost my temper and said some harsh things in return.  My father has never let me forget it.

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