As I approached the city limits, Wheatyard's life began to make sense. Or at least what I imagined of his life, from what little I could piece together. There was still so much left unsaid. I lingered at several stoplights after they turned from red to green, lost in my thoughts, until the drivers behind me leaned on their horns. Each time, as I finally hit the gas, I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw their shaking fists and curses silently mouthed from behind rolled-up windows.
On the side street I slowed and turned into the alley behind my building, tires crunching over gravel before quieting on the smooth cement as I pulled into my parking space. I shut off the ignition but lingered behind the wheel, continuing to think. With the car stopped, the rolled-down windows no longer provided any breezy relief from the heat, but still I sat.
The narrative I had been formulating, vaguely over the course of the last few weeks and more conclusively on the drive back from Tillsburg, at last crystallized in my mind.
Living in Tillsburg made sense, partly because there Wheatyard could have a house without the nuisance of a landlord; I assumed he owned it outright, inheriting it from Aunt Maude through his dad. More importantly, the town was familiar enough to bring him peace, with its precious few memories of better family times, while also keeping him at a safe distance from others, which gave him both the freedom to write undisturbed and something to rebel against—forever the outsider. The eccentricities and quirks, I guessed, could be his way of keeping others wary and distant, even though those had the opposite effect on me, drawing me nearer.
Of course Wheatyard became a writer. Whether he was truly manic-depressive or not, he was once a lost young kid, scared and completely alone in those group homes, and especially in Centerville. But I refused to speculate on what might have happened there, deciding that was his business; suddenly, I admired Mitch Hanratty's discretion.
After Centerville, anyone in his situation might easily turn to fiction. But instead of merely reading what others had written and remaining a prisoner of their whims, Wheatyard would write his own fiction. He would construct his own worlds, bringing together a dishevelled collection of characters and situations, imposing the clarity and order and justice that the real world had so cruelly denied him.
In written words he would exact his revenge—on Centerville, on the juvenile system that separated him from his sister, on the drunk driver who wrenched his parents away. He would write fiction, setting things neatly in place, making order out of chaos, arranging everything exactly as he wanted.
Yet despite being right about so much, Hanratty had one thing completely wrong. Even if Wheatyard did have hypergraphia, the compulsion to write, for him it wouldn't be an affliction. It would be salvation.