On a subsequent day I scrolled through the phone book and the internet from a computer at the library trying to find Tommy Sullivan. I tried to trace old acquaintances from the neighborhood and after a great amount of diligence I found Tony Artino. He held no grudge, or so he said, after so many years, but I doubted him because he did not remember Tommy Sullivan at all and he did not recollect his own molestation of Catherine nor did he remember our scuffle in the same manor in which I had. He didn’t remember getting his ass kicked by Tommy and he only remembered fighting me. He asked if I was still crazy and I hung up the phone on him.

I searched the county hall of records for the deed to the home that Tommy’s family had once owned and lived in, a yellow aluminum sided ranch house at the end of our street (the site of a vacant lot upon my visit) nearest the ball field, in the hopes of finding him through his family but the records that far back were inaccurate and poorly kept because I could find no such house and no such owner.

My mother used to ask me why she had never met this Tommy Sullivan kid. She wondered if he wasn’t just a figment of my imagination; someone who I had conjured up to fight my battles when things got out of hand.

What a ridiculous notion.

THE END