Guion was very interested in the fact that when I turned 18, I up and fled to California as fast as I could fly. He looked at me with what I suspected was approval, almost as if my desire to flee from home was what made me interesting in his eyes. Or like maybe he was proud of me for daring. "Your father was just like that," he told me. As soon as Dad graduated high school, he got himself a scholarship (like me) and then disappeared to New York City and they never heard from him again. He mentioned that several times, his arm going up like a plane to accentuate the point. And he would smile at me, like, see, you are one of us, you're one of the family, then.

This family scattered. A nucleus split apart. Eugene somewhere in Southern California, Guion somewhere in Dayton, then somewhere in Houston, then somewhere in space, (California, Phoenix, space, space, space) then somewhere in Cleveland. And my father in Philadelphia after Ohio after New York after Philadelphia. And nobody ever speaks to anybody, really, except for maybe once a decade or so, if that.

He described the nature of the conversations the brothers would have upon meeting up after ten years. "We'll talk for an hour, say everything that needs to be said, and then we're through." This was emphasized, as well. And I sat in my chair drinking up every word like dry starved thing, knowing that these two hours would not be enough for my twenty three years. That they would not be enough for the twenty three years to come—I am mostly Waynes, you know, grown up in a family that feels a great deficit if there is not some sort of weekly communication between members. One or two hours would never be enough for me. There were so many words under my skin. So many questions I could have asked or information about myself I might have shared. There was so much knowing that could happen.

"We're quiet," he said. "All three of us. And our father two. He ruled the brood, but he never talked much. And neither do we." He mentioned that his verbosity on this particular occasion was unusual and then he expressed again that when any of the brothers meet, all of a decade can be easily exchanged in the space of an hour and then there's nothing more to say.

He was not surprised when I told him that my father and I were not exceptionally close, that I was bad at corresponding, that he and I did not have the best talking relationship. He just nodded as if to say, "Well, that fits. She's definitely a Bluford." I did not—for once in my life—have to apologize (or feel apologetic or ashamed of or guilty) for these things. They were part of my genetic makeup, as far as Guy was concerned.

He told me that my father was the most social of the group, which was a surprising fact, given how disconnected he was from them while they were growing up. Guion said that Dad will send a card at Christmas and on your birthday and whatnot, and will have Genie's contact information when he wants or needs it, stuff like that. Eugene (Genie) was the least communicative and he supposed he was somewhere in the middle.

He was sixty. He spoke often of the shock of realizing all of a sudden that you're sixty and that all the years have just swooshed by and (he's looking about like) what happened, how did I get here.