For Alison. Andy Parker
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I can’t even imagine what you and your family must be going through right now.”
Governor McAuliffe is a consummate politician with a perfect politician’s voice: smooth, confident, genuine, forceful enough to get what he wants, but polished enough that you wouldn’t want to resist anyway. We talked for about five minutes, me pacing in the half-light of the bedroom, the purifier humming, the fan blowing cool air across my face, until he asked what he could do to help. I told him I was not going to let my daughter die in vain. I told him I was coming after the NRA, any politicians who wouldn’t budge on gun control, and anyone who stood in my way.
“Andy, I’m right there with you,” he said. And he was.
When I hung up with the governor it was almost 2:00 p.m. and the emails from the news networks were rolling in. Just the day before, when I wanted to trumpet my success at the dam, none of the national shows would have given me the time of day. Today everyone wanted me. They were all clamoring for me to be on their show, to tell my story—Alison’s story—on their air.
And the funny thing is, I didn’t really want to talk to anyone. What was I supposed to do? Go on a press tour because my daughter is dead? The first email came from Sean Hannity. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. Then Greta Van Susteren. Nope. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any interviews, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to start off with Fox News, where I knew I’d have to tangle with some Second Amendment apologist who’d want to wipe away Alison’s shooting like so many others before it. Why don’t you wipe up the fucking blood at the marina? I thought. The image of her lying there on the wooden planking, eyes closed, haunted me. I imagine it always will.
Then my sister Jane Ann called back. Ian Shapira with the Washington Post had managed to get hold of her, hoping that she could put him in touch with me. I’ll say this much for journalists, they’re a resourceful lot. “He seems like a genuinely nice guy,” she said. “I really think you should talk to him.”
I sighed. So it begins. This is my Bull Run. I took down his information, hung up with Jane Ann, and punched in the number.
To his credit, Ian was every bit as kind and decent as Jane Ann had said. He really wanted to understand what kind of person Alison was, how devastated I was.
“Pretty damn devastated,” I said.
We talked for close to thirty minutes. I paced the whole time. It still didn’t feel real. He thanked me for my time and promised to email me a link to the story as soon as it was posted.
That was the first one, but it wouldn’t be the last.
After getting off the phone with Ian, I knew had to get out of the house. I needed air.
“I’m taking the dog out,” I told Barbara without breaking stride. Jack, our ten-year-old Chow-golden retriever mix, knew the drill. We often went out in the early afternoon, but that fluffball could sniff out a walk a mile away. We got in the car, Jack beside me in the passenger seat, and I started driving without really knowing where I was going.
I drove straight to the Philpott Dam kayak put-in. The icy, crystal clear water was rushing out of the lake, over the dam, and down the river, thin wisps of fog hanging just a few feet above the frothing surface of the downstream rapids. Jack and I crunched down the gravel path toward the water. Tall evergreens lined the banks on both sides, the scent of pine strong in the air. Jack lapped at the stream as it burbled by.
Of course I would come to the dam, just as a compass needle is drawn toward magnetic North. I’d told Barbara that I needed to be alone, but that wasn’t true.
I needed to be with Alison. This was where she’d be.
We’d been coming here together for years. Alison and Chris and Barbara and I had launched our kayaks at this very spot just last month, on the Fourth of July. It’s where I was the day before. The day before. What I wouldn’t give to go back. Just twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been so proud of my success, the centerpiece of my bid for reelection to the Henry County Board of Supervisors. Just twenty-four hours earlier, Alison had been alive. Now she wasn’t. And now nothing else mattered.
I gazed downriver and for a split second I saw her paddling around the bend, a big smile on her face. How could it be that I’d never see that smile again, except in memory? I ached to hold her in my arms again. I stood there, bitterness and resentment and anger rising within me, rage and vitriol and bile, and then I erupted with all the force of Etna, Pompeii, and Mount St. Helens put together.
This time it was directed toward God. I’ve never been particularly religious, but I gave that bastard an earful. People always tell me that it was Alison’s time to go, that God called her home. What a stupid fucking thing to say. What kind of comfort is that? What kind of God would do something like that? Not any God I want to know, that’s for damn sure.
When I ran out of expletives to hurl skyward, I collapsed onto the closest boulder, totally spent. Jack sat faithfully at my feet. There was no one else around, no sound but the soft murmur of the stream. I let the river wash away my anger.
One of our family’s favorite movies has always been Galaxy Quest, a Star Trek send-up from the late nineties that now seems to be a staple of late-night cable TV. The aliens’ motto in that movie is “Never give up. Never surrender.” Over time it became something of a mantra for our entire family. With Alison’s imitation of the aliens’ comically stilted cadence echoing in my head, I knew I had to listen. I couldn’t give up, no matter how much I wanted to. I had to keep her memory alive. I also knew that if I was going to make it through the night, I was going to need some help. Still propped up on the boulder, with Jack sniffing idly around the water’s edge, I dug into the pocket of my shorts for my phone.
Our family doctor had already heard the news by the time I got hold of him. “I can’t imagine,” he said. He called in a prescription for Xanax to help Barbara and me get to sleep and said to take care and call him back if there was anything else he could do. I thanked him and hung up and sat staring off over the rushing water, into the lush greenery and the flowering mountain laurels, and I thought, This is where she’ll be. I’ll always be able to find her here. I felt a great sense of calm in that idea. I have no idea how long I sat on the boulder, Jack at my feet, before I finally rose and we trudged back up the hill toward the car.
On my way back home from the river something compelled me to stop at Town Gun, our friendly local firearms store. Part of me thought I might need to buy a gun for protection. There was no reason to do so because the truthers had not yet descended. Another part of me wanted to know how fast a person could buy a gun. Looking back, I expect those reasons were a pretext for a different, darker reason.
The guy behind the counter didn’t know who I was and was quite eager to show me a Smith & Wesson .38 Special. According to him, it was the perfect self-defense weapon. “Is there a waiting period?” I asked, assuming there surely must be.
“Oh, no,” he cheerfully replied. “You just fill out this paperwork, and we’ll have the background check done in minutes. No waiting at all!”
What the fuck are you doing here? I thought to myself. Are you so deep in shock that you’re actually thinking of buying a gun? For what? Do you really think she wants you to join her?
I returned to my senses, such as they were, and told the clerk I’d think about it and come back later. I realized later that the visit to the gun shop was my subconscious taking control, directing me to peer into the abyss as I stood precariously at the precipice. I wondered how many others had paid a gun shop that same visit, hiding their misery as I had, and bought that .38 that would only be fired once. As I would later discover, it happens daily.
The moment I managed to step back from the brink, I realized I had to fight. I had to come out swinging hard.
When we got back to the house, Alison’s boyfriend, Chris, had arrived and Lynn had managed to clear out most of the other guests. Barbara’s family and mine would come up in the next couple of days, but they hadn’t arrived yet. It was Barbara, Lynn, Noel, Chris, and me, sitting around the island in the kitchen quaffing the finest Trader