They closed the airplane door a few minutes ago and here comes an irritated flight attendant for the third time.
“Sir, you need to turn off your phone.”
Sorry. My concerns are somewhere other than the infinitesimal possibility that a cellphone call from my wife might somehow short-circuit the pilot’s instrumentation between the gate area and the runway. Also, I am pretty certain my son is in the throes of a drug relapse.
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Josh is missing, or at least he isn’t answering his phone. I think he might be passed out somewhere, drunk or high, or possibly dead. A personal check has been taken from our checkbook and he is the only logical suspect. It was cashed for the odd amount of $70, with “groceries” written on the check’s memo line, because addicts will do anything to protect their addiction — lie, steal, turn away from family and friends, write “groceries” on a check in the belief that nobody will suspect “heroin.”
Jeanne and I have been through this so many times — missing kid, missing money, drugs, alcohol, relapses, having our insides ripped out, sadness, rage, going to bed wondering if our son would be alive the next morning, waking up after little sleep, anticipating more drama, more stress, more anger, more pain ...
“Sir, please hang up the phone ...”
I turn off the phone and go numb.
It is a 75-minute evening flight from Atlanta to Memphis. As a sports columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I am scheduled to cover a Georgia-Ole Miss football game the next day in nearby Oxford. But I expect that when the plane lands, I will phone my wife, hear her crying and learn my son is gone.
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