“To thine own self be true.” Ray had tried. Sheri set down a bottle of Miller Light and a shot of whisky in front of Ray. A twitchy kid reeking of cologne tossed a twenty on the bar. “They got happy hour?”

Ray downed the whiskey. “Two for one tap beers.”

Payday Friday, and the place was packed. The railyard was under construction. Union Pacific had brought in an outfit from Milwaukee to get the job done. These young bucks had shitty attitudes and money to throw around.

Ray reached into the top pocket of his jean jacket, hoping to find some cash. Instead, his fingers landed on the one-year AA chip. He traced the raised triangle with his thumb. Unity. Service. Recovery. He’d failed at all three.

A stream of yard rats in greasy Carhart jackets strutted into The Tracks. This had been going on for months. At eight o’clock, the crowd would file out like a herd of cattle when the new club across the street opened. If he could hold out until then, maybe Sheri would take him back to her place. She’d done it before.

They had gone to school together, he and Sheri. Back then he’d been famous, a local celebrity. He hadn’t made time for Sheri or girls like her, the quiet types who grew prettier as you got to know them. No, he’d gone for the curvy girls in tight skirts. Bimbos, his mom had called them. Gorgeous girls who shined until they didn’t, which usually happened right after high school.

Sheri poured him another shot. “Are you okay?” she asked.

She hadn’t judged him. He’d sat at the bar for a year ordering Cokes she served in pint glasses. Last Thursday, he’d set down a fifty and ordered a beer and a bump. “You sure?” was all she said.

Ray had punched a smart-ass drunk in the face at a local hockey game. Broke his nose and was court-ordered to attend AA for a year. Well, at least he’d done that. He’d managed to stay sober for a year. And he’d paid for it. The nightmares got worse. He’d thought about killing himself, even adding it to the to-do list in his head. Last Thursday, the year ran out on the judge’s order, and Ray got back on the proverbial horse.

He studied the crowd through the chipped mirror behind the bar. O’Sullivan owned the place along with half the buildings in this rundown section of town. Ray had gone to school with him. He’d paid Ray for copies of his homework. O’Sullivan was still cutting corners. The Tracks was a dump. The Budweiser clock above the pool table read half past six. It was set fifteen minutes fast. Sheri yelled Last Call early six nights a week, and six nights a week, some drunk complained. “They sure got you hustling tonight,” Ray said.

A bear of a guy in overalls bent over the bar and waved an empty beer bottle in the air.

“I’ll be back.” Sheri pointed at Ray’s beer mug. “Slow down.”

Ray caught a whiff of cologne and turned around. The kid had a fighter’s face. His nose was off-center, and a scar ran horizontally along his left cheekbone. He was wiry and built for speed. “I’ll flag her down.” Ray held up his empty shot glass. “But it’ll cost you.”

Sheri appeared, and the kid ordered a round for his friends who had commandeered the table in front of the big screen TV. “And get your friend here a shot of Crown.” He slapped Ray on the back. “Thanks, man.”

Talking to this punk could set off the fireworks in Ray’s head. It had been a long time, and he didn’t need that kind of trouble. No one did. Ray folded his hands. He counted to ten in his head—a trick he’d picked up in an anger management class, another court order the judge had thrown at him.

He knocked back the shot. The whisky worked its magic, numbing the hard-wired parts of his brain. With it came regret. The kind that left his insides itchy and led to more whiskey. It was pathetic, this cycle he’d been rolling around in like a pig in shit for most of his life, but he didn’t know how to stop it. That was the plain truth. Tomorrow morning, sometime before he popped open his first beer, he’d try to talk himself out of it. Try to negotiate with the bastard who lived inside him. The guy he’d become after that last shot. It wasn’t Sheri’s fault. She’d pour him drinks until she was forced to take his keys if it came to that. Ray watched her full, round breasts bob up and down as her hips swung side to side. Something akin to youth stirred inside him. Sheri caught him staring and rolled her eyes. She could still make him blush.

Sheri knew his story, at least part of it—the whole town did. If he’d just left after high school, things would have turned out differently.

Maybe.

Ray and his mom had left the apartment above his grandparents’ house and moved to Cedarville in the fall of 1965 after his old man died. Ray was six and started first grade the following day with a sea of rowdy kids. A week later, a package arrived. Inside was a brand-new, leatherbound 1964 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia Volume 1 (A). A note was taped to the front cover of the book.

Hey Kid,

Your grandma says the whole world is inside these books. Hope you learn a lot.

Be good.

Grandpa Lou

Over the next year, he received the whole set of encyclopedias.

Ray marveled at the countless photos, drawings, and diagrams. He was transported to faraway places and respected the important people he read about. His teachers said he had a photographic memory. He’d learn much later that it only pertained to the things he read. The stuff that happened to him, the important things, lived inside him like shadows.

By junior high, Ray was the smartest kid in school. His encyclopedic knowledge was something folks talked about at the grocery store and Fred’s Barber Shop. He had no trouble accessing the thousands of pages of information when it came to answering questions on tests. Name the seven continents. They were located on page 801 in Volume 4 (Ci to CZ). Name the capitals of all fifty states. A chart titled “Facts in Brief about the States of the Union,” including state birds and state flowers, was on pages 52-55 in Volume 19 (U-V).

Ray had been a local superstar by his junior year in high school, the same year the varsity football and basketball teams were in the state semi-finals. It didn’t matter. All attention was on Ray, "the Whiz Kid"—a nickname dubbed by a local newspaper reporter.

It was the seventies. Middle-class suburban sprawl was devouring Midwest farmland with planned subdivisions and strip malls. Cedarville ended at the tracks. On the other side was Glenwood with its new movie theater and indoor community pool. In contrast, Cedarville was a workingman’s town still dependent on railroad jobs and contract work for the Oldsmobile plant in Michigan, a town quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks. The people of Cedarville needed a local hero, and by all accounts, Ray fit the bill. He was a tall, good-looking kid who was smarter than any of those yahoos over in Glenwood.

Ray’s mother was a sickly, nervous woman who feared the intrusion of her son’s celebrity into her otherwise private life. Ray was on his own when it came to teachers, reporters, and college recruiters. He didn’t know what to make of all the attention. Girls threw themselves at him. He was voted prom king, class president, and grand marshal for the local Fourth of July parade, which his mom did not attend, complaining of a migraine.

It all began to unravel with his junior year standardized test results. Mrs. Dombrowski, the high school guidance counselor, had scheduled an appointment to meet with Ray and his mom. Ray showed up alone. He was surprised to see the principal and his calculus teacher at the meeting. Ray’s scores were impressive, but he had failed miserably on the essay portion of the exam. What happened? Mrs. Dombrowski asked. Ray saw the questions in his head: Discuss The Great Gatsby as it relates to American culture today. Which country was most affected by World War II and why? Who was the most influential world leader of the nineteenth century? Discuss how his leadership has changed the course of history.

He remembered closing his eyes, looking for pages that would help him, but the words and phrases muddled together in a thick alphabet soup. It was like someone had gathered up the books in his head and walked off with them. His calculus teacher sat sizing up Ray as though the two had never met. The principal had written a letter on behalf of Ray to Columbia University’s admissions board. He wanted answers, but Ray didn’t have any. Mrs. Dombrowski was a kind woman with meaty arms and short, red hair. She had stood in as Ray’s surrogate mother when it came to his future. Sitting in her office, he felt as though he had failed her; that he had failed the whole town.

Ray didn’t share what he saw in his head. The questions on the exam required that he think for himself. He had never been good at that. He finally asked to be dismissed. Mrs. Dombrowski’s pity bored holes in what little confidence he possessed.

The last semester of high school was agonizing. No one knew of his meeting with Mrs. Dombrowski, but then there was the incident in history class. His teacher, during a discussion on famous United States monuments, asked Ray how tall the Statue of Liberty stood from the base to the top of her flame. Ray accessed Volume 17 (S) from the memory bank in his head, which felt disconnected from the rest of him, and found very little. He glanced around the room, a collective pride radiating off his friends as they waited for his response. “I don’t know,” Ray stammered.

He found the problem once he got home. The information was in Volume 12 (L) under “Liberty Statue of”, but it was too late.

Ray felt like an impostor, and kids, like dogs, sensed it. The attention and admiration faded just like it did for those pretty girls he’d slept with. After graduation, he took a job on the railroad as a gandy dancer, until he was promoted to switchman after memorizing a manual he found in the breakroom. That ended when he got into a bar fight with his boss.

Ray glanced at the Budweiser clock. Fifteen minutes to go, and these boys would head across the street. For years, he had depended on locals to buy him a beer and bump after answering trivia questions. “Hey, Ray. Who was the twelfth president of this great nation?” some old codger would shout out.

A two-page photo spread of the Presidents of the United States was in Volume 15 (P). “Zachary Taylor was the President from 1849 to 1850.” Taylor was also on page 48 in Volume 18 (T). Ray had looked him up after learning he’d only served a year as President. “He died suddenly on July 9, 1850. He’s buried in a family cemetery near Louisville, Kentucky.”

“Buy that man a beer,” someone else would holler. Ray accepted the challenges with pride and secretly referred to his good fortune as The Pavlovian Tavern Experiment. Answer a question and get a free drink.

Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth President of the United States after Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963. Remarkably, President Johnson was in the 1964 publication of The World Book Encyclopedia. A lot had happened since then. Ray couldn’t remember the last time someone asked him a question.

Sheri looked tired. They weren’t kids anymore. Their forty-year class reunion was coming up, and what did he have to show for it? “Hey, sweetie,” Ray lifted his glass, “when you get a minute.”

Sheri shook her head and turned to help the kid who was back for a third time. Ray swayed a bit when he stood. The kid laughed, and the fireworks lit up inside Ray’s head. He sat back down, clasped his hands together, and started counting to ten—this time out loud. Sheri came out from behind the bar. Ray rested his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. She shook it off and grabbed the kid’s arm. “You and your buddies need to leave.”

Another fight could land Ray in county jail. But if the kid threw the first punch, Ray would flatten him.

The kid read Ray’s mind and nodded. “Settle your tab and get out of here,” Ray said.

The kid rummaged through a wad of cash, handed Sheri a fifty, and disappeared through the side door.

Sheri turned around and snatched Ray’s truck keys off the bar. “Why do you have to act like that?”

Ray knew the answer to that question, and it had nothing to do with those damn encyclopedias or the kid. He reached for the keys. Sheri tossed them in her tip jar and pointed at the door. “You’re cut off.” Ray grabbed his jacket from the barstool and fumbled with the buttons. Sheri stood with her arms crossed. “I liked you better sober,” she said.

Ray looked up from the buttons. He’d seen that expression before. Sheri had sworn at him, threatened him, even thrown a beer mug at him once, but this was different. Like Mrs. Dombrowski, Sheri pitied him. Whatever screwed-up connection and history they shared, it was over. He searched his head for something to say.

Sheri didn’t wait. “Go home, Ray.”

Ray had learned a few things during his sobriety. The dull ache of arthritis in his joints and the sharp pains left behind in his bones from long-forgotten fights had made him feel alive, like his being on this planet accounted for something. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He stepped out into the moonless night, where the cold air blew out the fireworks. Like Russian nesting dolls, there was the story inside the story. The one no one knew about except his mom, but she’d been gone three years. The cancer had eaten her organs like a parasite. He had prayed on her deathbed that she would take The Nightmare with her. God had other plans, so he was stuck with it. He walked along the tracks, pulling the collar of his jacket up to cover his neck against the cold. He navigated the railroad ties on his way to his apartment as his thoughts stepped aside, making room for the parade of red and white Old Milwaukee pull top cans. He rubbed his eyes. The image remained like it always did. He felt sweat pool at the base of his spine despite the cold. Whether sleeping or drunk, like he was now, there was muscle memory to The Nightmare, and he jammed his hands into his jacket pockets to steady the shaking.

“Four hundred seventy-eight! Four hundred seventy-nine!” he shouted, into the black night. Counting railroad ties did nothing to dampen the memory.

For Christ’s sake. Ray was only six, a little boy, when his dad tossed a can of Old Milwaukee to him. “Drink up, kid,” he said.

Ray held the cold can between his legs and counted eleven dead soldiers at his dad’s feet and three on the coffee table, resting on their sides.

Ray’s mom was in the kitchen pulling chicken pot pies out of the oven. She swore under her breath. Something about burning her hand to feed that good-for-nothing S.O.B. Ray looked up from the can of beer he still hadn’t opened. His dad was slouched over in the plaid lounge chair, passed out. Ray didn’t dare move.

His grandparents owned the bungalow and lived downstairs. They had a window air-conditioner in the living room. Ray’s dad said it was a waste of hard-earned money. The heat was stifling. The cedar paneling oozed a spicy aroma that got on your clothes. Ray wanted to go outside. His best friend, Benny, lived next door. They had made plans to catch bullfrogs in the creek that ran through their backyards after supper.

His mom dropped something in the sink, and Ray’s dad pulled himself upright in the chair. The muscles in his arms strained against his T-shirt as he snatched a beer from the metal cooler he took everywhere. “I said drink up.” He held the can like a fastball and eyed Ray as home plate.

Ray fumbled with the pull top. The beer was sour. He held out the can to examine. He didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. His dad leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees. His eyes wide open now, he studied Ray. “Like this, son.” Ray watched his dad take a long draw.

Ray thought about going to the kitchen to be with his mom, but he knew his dad’s moods like he did the predictable bird that poked its head out of the little door of the cuckoo clock above the sofa. Ray raised the can to his mouth like his dad had and drank until a warm fuzz coated his belly.

His dad winked, finished off his beer, and crushed the can under his work boot. “That’s my boy.”

“Dinner’s ready,” his mom called out from someplace above Ray’s head.

“Come on, son. Food is on the table,” his dad said.

Ray pushed himself up from the sofa. Without anything to grab onto, he reached for his dad. “That’s it, little man. I gotcha.”

In the cramped hallway between the living room and kitchen, Ray leaned against the maple door leading down the steep stairs to the garage. His mom stood in the sunlit kitchen wearing a yellow dress and holding a pot of green beans. Ray kept a hand on the wall to steady himself as he shuffled toward the yellow dress.

“Ray, what’s wrong?” The pot banged on the red Formica tabletop. Ray covered his ears. His mom bent down and, with gentle fingers, pried open his eyelids. “My God, Lloyd, what did you do to him?”

“I feel funny,” Ray said.

She kissed Ray’s forehead. “Go to your room.”

His dad stood next to the sink, a wild look in his eyes. Ray seized his mom’s hand. A sharp smack rang off the kitchen cabinets. Ray ducked. His mom tumbled backwards into the counter next to the stove, cupping a hand over her mouth. His dad loomed over her with fists raised.

“Run!” his mom hollered.

Ray bolted to the door. Yanking it open, he contemplated the steep stairwell.

Ray’s dad staggered toward him. The slap to the back of Ray’s head nearly sent him headfirst down the stairs and registered through the drunken fog as danger.

Ray side-stepped, leaving his dad standing where he had just been. Ray’s thoughts sloshed around as though submerged in warm water. “Mom?” he called out.

“Shut up, kid.” The crack to his cheek burned. Ray squared his shoulders against a second blow.

His mom appeared from the kitchen with a swollen lip. Blotches of bright red smeared her yellow dress. Blood, he thought. Mom’s blood. Ray pushed his dad out of the way and ran toward her.

Groans and thuds came from the stairwell, filling the apartment and stopping Ray in his tracks. Slowly, his mom made her way to the stairs, passing by Ray as though avoiding a chair that stood in her way. Ray turned. His mother stood at the top of the stairs; her mouth opened to scream but nothing came out.

“Mommy?” Ray scrambled to her side, grabbing her hand to steady himself at the door’s threshold. His dad lay crumpled against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Ray waited for him to move, to start yelling. Ray buried his face in the folds of his mother’s dress. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

“It was an accident, son,” his mother said.

Ray ran to his bedroom. Sitting on his bed, he saw his mother slam the door to the stairs and retreat to the kitchen. The apartment was quiet. He felt alone.

When the police arrived, Ray’s mom came to his room. “Stay put,” she said and closed the door behind her.

Ray imagined being dragged from the apartment and going to jail, a place where bad people were sent and never heard from again. Ray scurried under the bed. He heard voices in the living room and outside the house. When the officers left, his mother went to her room. She never looked Ray in the eyes again. After all these years, the sick feeling of paying for your sins still whittled away at him.

Eight hundred forty-two, eight hundred forty-three railroad ties. Counting eight hundred fifty-one, Ray turned left.

O’Sullivan also owned the old Union Pacific rooming house. The city completed an inspection after numerous complaints about a clogged toilet on the second floor and a roach-infested kitchen on the first. The building was a state historic site. O’Sullivan was forced to bring the building up to code. Ray did maintenance work and harassed crappy tenants until they left in exchange for a rent-free studio apartment on the second floor.

Ray walked up the back stairs to the landing and cursed his frozen fingers as he worked the key into the lock. The apartment was freezing. He turned on the space heater, grabbed a six-pack from the fridge, and plunked down on the sofa, one of a handful of things he took from his mom’s apartment after she died.

The television shorted out during a thunderstorm the previous spring. Ray sat in the yellow glow of the railyard lights. A bookshelf he’d fashioned out of scrap wood and cinderblocks held his encyclopedia collection. All that encyclopedic knowledge didn’t do him squat. The books containing the world stage before 1964 were still in his head. The information was outdated, and much of it useless. If he were being honest, most everyone he knew would agree that Ray and those books had a lot in common.

He sucked down an Old Milwaukee and opened another. He closed his eyes. The memories following his dad’s death appeared in disjointed snippets. His grandparents had been at the VFW playing bingo and got home late. His grandma’s shrills came up through the vents, making Ray tremble. There was the funeral where Ray was forced to wear a wool suit that pinched under his armpits and caused a rash that itched like crazy in the heat. The ham dinner afterwards was held at Dick’s Dockside Tavern. Lots of strangers were there. His mom’s parents showed up. Ray had never met them before. They were rich. His grandpa Lou had called them fancy, like it was a bad word.

Sometime after the funeral, he and his mom packed up the apartment in boxes they picked up at Dean’s Supermarket. Cedarville was across the river, where Ray’s mom found a job as a secretary at Linden Quarry. During it all, his mom seemed to shrink before his eyes until Ray all but replaced his dad as the man of the house. His grandpa Lou had said as much when he dropped Ray and his mom off at their new apartment. “You take care of your mom. You hear me.”

Ray had thought about tossing the encyclopedias. They were the last vestige of his past that he’d sever if he could. But among the memories, a red-hot ember still glowed, illuminating the truth. He kicked the coffee table. His mother’s voice cut through the haze. “It was an accident, son.”

It was no accident. Ray still sensed the heat radiating off his dad’s sweat-soaked T-shirt on the palms of his hands. He’d pushed with all his might and shuddered in amazement as his dad clawed at the air like a mighty bear to steady himself.

Ray crushed an empty beer can in his fist and opened another. The images of his dad’s broken body were hazy, but the grunts and moans coming from the stairwell still sucker-punched him in the gut.

His dad appeared before him across the room in the soiled plaid lounge chair from his grandparents’ apartment—the left side of his face mangled; the flesh peeled back, exposing bone. A thick smear of crimson stained his white T-shirt. Those same wild eyes Ray remembered from that night in the kitchen, judging him. Ray threw an empty can at the chair. “Leave me alone, old man.”

Ray stumbled to the encyclopedias and reached for Volume 8 (G). The book flopped open to page 166, the page he’d referenced countless times, hoping his memory had failed him. He found the word that struck his nerves like a match. GHOST is believed by some people to be the unhappy and often harmful spirit of a dead person. Ray fell to his knees. With eyes closed, he lifted his head and waited for a sign, a message—anything to release him from The Nightmare.

Ray sat back on his heels and retrieved the AA chip from his pocket. All those meetings, five times a week for the first three months, hadn’t changed a thing. He managed to talk about the fight and the court order. He even admitted to being an alcoholic. But The Nightmare he’d take to his grave.

The heater had done its job, and the warmth burrowed under his flannel shirt against his skin. He opened his eyes. The chair was empty. For a moment, Ray felt worthy like great men do when there is no one else to answer to. But he knew the truth. Some night soon, his dad would return.

Ray grasped the chip and folded his hands in prayer.

The World Book Encyclopedia’s definition of God was in the same book on page 229. The Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, All Knowing, All Powerful, Infinite, and Ever Present. Maybe so. But Ray, for all his cursing and pleading for forgiveness, had never heard from Him.

Like a thunderbolt, the cheap, fluorescent tube above his head exploded, raining down shards of soda-lime glass like sand. Ray didn’t see it that way. Instead, the wings of fallen angels brushed against his skin in the darkness. Clutching the AA chip, he crawled on his hands and knees to the cordless phone on the floor next to the sofa and called his sponsor. “I’m out of coffee,” he said.

The gruff voice on the other end, a lifeline Ray had batted away too many times to count, chuckled. “No problem, kid. I just made a fresh pot. Can’t sleep for shit anymore. I’ll be there in twenty.”

Ray sat in the dark and waited.