The Home Stretch

For Bill, the end has always been in view. His life has seen a series of unlikely extensions. When he was young, he hated his father and contemplated suicide. Later in his life he was diagnosed with leukemia and expected to die within months. Bill's childhood was spent on a communal evangelical mission, but eventually Bill began to question his parents' strict religious beliefs. His father reacted with violence and Bill felt trapped between the dishonesty of trying to conform to his parents' beliefs and the conviction that he was doomed to hell for questioning them. Eventually he provokes his father into a confrontation that leads to an outcome that redefines their relationship and alters the course of both of their lives. By midlife, Bill has been married for twenty years and has his own family. The challenges he has faced at sea as chief engineer on tugboats have helped him heal. His thoughts of suicide have faded. His father's recent descent into Alzheimer's Disease has created an avenue for the reconciliation the two have worked on for years. Then, unexpectedly, a story emerges about his father, involving his sister, and Bill is confronted once again with the dark side of his father's personality.

Wayne M. Johnston taught English, Creative Writing, and Publications at La Conner High School for nineteen years. Prior to that, for twenty-two years he worked on tugboats, usually as chief engineer, towing freight barges between Canadian and West Coast American ports. In 2011 he won the Soundings Review First Publication Award for his essay, "Sailing," and has published other essays since. "The Home Stretch" started as one of these essays, with the working title, "Vietnam and Forgiveness."