For the first four weeks of my developmental writing class Kevin, a muscular, handsome, bearded man of thirty-five, sat silent, writing nothing. Then one morning he brought to my desk a scrap of paper. It had been ripped from a small spiral note pad. He held it towards me, an offering.

“Can I write about this?” he asked nervously, staring at his feet.

I read slowly, struggling to interpret his tiny script. It was the story of the night his father had murdered his mother in the kitchen of their farm home. When the shotgun fired, destroying his mother’s head, Kevin, age eight, and his three younger brothers ran from their bedroom and into the kitchen to see. In horror and shock they ran wildly about the house, yelling and screaming, and then returned to the kitchen and stood and absorbed the scene, wetting their pants, each holding in their trembling hands the croquet mallets they had slept with each night for months in hopes they might protect their mother in the event of just such a tragedy.

I was stunned.

“Yes,” I told Kevin. “I’ll help you.”

With his right index finger Kevin typed his story into a computer in the learning center, day after day slowly and laboriously hunting and pecking the keys after I had helped him to proofread each new addition to his tale and to correct his punctuation. In his story Kevin described his life both before and after his mother's murder. His father was a drunk. When he drank he got mean. When his father beat on his mother, Kevin wrote, he beat on her like he thought she was a man. He beat on his sons. He menaced them with guns. He set fire to their house. Twice he'd been convicted of vehicular homicide. Twice he'd served time in prison. After the murder he fled. When he sobered up he turned himself in and expressed remorse for what he'd done. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Nine years later he was out. Kevin's life spun out of control. He and his three brothers all lost themselves in drinking and drugs. One brother killed himself. Five times Kevin was arrested for drunk driving. He spent time in jail. Three times he overdosed on drugs and woke up in a hospital. He married and divorced. One morning Kevin got up after a binge and called a local treatment center. Two years later he enrolled in my class. In the remaining eight weeks of the quarter Kevin's story grew to twelve pages before we ran out of time. Exhilarated, proud of his achievement, Kevin finished in a rush.

“That’s all behind me now,” he concluded. “Forward!”

A year after his graduation from Techno, I received an invitation to Kevin's wedding and a note of thanks. I didn’t attend, but I sent a small gift and a card. I am tempted to end my story of his story here, happily, but life is rarely so tidy and neat as our hopes and our arts. A second year passed. One day I was both startled and pleased to see Kevin at a locker in the east wing of the building. He was back in school, upgrading his skills in photography.
   
“Hey, the newlywed!” I waved.

“Oh,” he smiled, shyly. “That didn’t work out.”

Over the years I continued to copy and distribute Kevin’s memoir in my classes as an example—of many things—for my students. Just four days after one such instance, one of my students returned to class from a long weekend in Kansas where she and her boyfriend had attended a motorcycle rally. There—in a startling coincidence—she had somehow bumped into Kevin, and in their brief conversation they had learned what they shared in common.

“Is Mr. Skank still using my story?” Kevin had asked.

“Yes, yes, he is!” she told him. “I just read it!”

This pleased Kevin immensely, my student reported. Kevin couldn’t stop smiling. Her news left me dazed.

“How did he seem?” I asked.

“Fine!”