Billy was stunned by his fathers suicide letter. He read it over and over, trying to be skeptical about it, but the more he read it, the more he wanted to know Billy later told the writer of his attempt to check it out.

Before he left his sisters house in Logan, Billy phoned the Florida Bar Association to track down Johnny Morrison’s lawyer, only to discover that the lawyer was dead. He called the hall of records and found there was no record of a marriage license for Johnny Morrison or Johnny Sohraner.

He kept making calls until he reached the former owner of a nightclub at which Johnny had worked. The man was retired now but had a boat in Key Biscayne and still brought seafood to the club. He said he had known that someday one of Johnny’s kids would be asking about him. He’d fired Billy’s mother from the nightclub, he said, because of the caliber of people she was bringing in. Johnny had tried to keep her away from the people she was associating with, but it was an impossible task. He said he had never seen a woman push a man around like that.

Billy said he found somebody else—a man who had worked at the Midget Motel and who remembered his father. He recalled that the phone calls during that Christmas holiday had depressed Johnny. It seemed to fit with Johnny’s claim in the note that Dorothy had been calling him, taunting him.

When he returned to the hospital, he began to lose time again. Monday morning he called the writer to ask that their appointment be postponed.

The writer arrived on Wednesday, and knew immediately that the Teacher was gone. He was facing the unfused Billy. They spoke for a while, and the writer, hoping to recapture the Teacher’s interest, asked Billy to explain the radiotelephone he had been working on. As Billy fumbled for words, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the voice strengthened, the language became more articulate, and the discussion became more technical. The Teacher had come back.

“Why are you so upset and depressed?” the writer asked.

“I’ve been tired. I’m not getting any sleep.”

The writer gestured toward the book from the Cody Electronics and Radio School. “Who’s been working on that equip-' ment?”

“That’s the reason this thing was built, because Tommy’s been here most of the day. Dr. Cauls been talking to him.” “Who are you right now?”

“The Teacher, but in a very depressed state.”

“Why did you leave? Why did Tommy come?”

“My mom, and her husband now. And her past. I’m at a point where not a whole lot matters to me. I’m so tense. I took a Valium yesterday and slept the whole day. I was up all last night, until six o’oclock this morning. I wanted to get away …I was upset about the parole board. They want me back in Lebanon. Sometimes I feel I’d rather let them take me back and get it over with. Somehow I’ve got to get them to leave me alone.”