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me against my bedroom wall.
    He was telling me to do something and I was saying no, I wouldn’t do it—and he just charged. I dropped to the ground and curled up, even though I knew it was a bad idea. Any time I tried to protect myself it always made him madder: running, hiding, trying to cover my head or face. That was all forbidden. Once he started coming, I was supposed to hold still and take it. So I knew when I dropped to the ground that I was only making it worse. But instead of flailing away at my back like he sometimes did, he hissed “Motherfucker” under his breath, grabbed me by my leg and shoulder, hoisted me into the air, and threw me at the wall, above my bed.
    At first I didn’t even understand what had happened. I was dazed and my ears were ringing, but nothing was broken except something inside the wall. I’d heard something under the plaster crack when I hit, but the wall looked fine. I didn’t know what to do, so I just lay there on the bed. And Dad was gone. He’d run out of the room as soon as he did it.
    When I made some reference to it later, he told me never to talk about it again.
    â€œAnyway,” he said, “it was an accident. I was aiming for the bed.”
    *   *   *
    Over the course of a year, John told me the whole story of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . He may not have read me the books in their entirety, but if he didn’t read every word, he certainly read from them while he worked his way through the epic. He used different voices for a lot of the main characters. He sang the songs and chanted the poems. Sometimes he’d compare one or another of the characters in the book to some of his lead figures, to show me what chain mail or a long sword looked like. John particularly liked doing the voice of Gollum, the wretched creature that follows the heroes through most of the story, and nearly destroys the world because of his sycophantic obsession with a stolen magic ring. I let John do the voice as long as I could stand it because I knew he liked doing it, but one day as we neared the end of the story, I just snapped.
    â€œStop it,” I said. “I hate that voice.”
    â€œWhy?” he asked. He was clearly surprised by the criticism.
    I thought about it before I answered.
    â€œI hate Gollum,” I said. “He’s the worst person in the book.”
    â€œWhy’s that?” John asked.
    â€œHe’s weak. He can’t even fight. He just lies and cheats and steals. Anyone could kill him—should kill him—but he begs and whines and they let him live. And then he does bad things to them after they were nice to him.”
    â€œWell,” John said. “That’s true, I suppose. But that’s the thing about Gollum. He knows what the right thing is. He can see it. And he wants to be good. But he had some bad luck. Right? He found the ring. And once he found it, he needed it. The ring made him that way.”
    â€œBecause he’s weak.”
    â€œMaybe,” John said. “But remember—nobody else could carry it besides Frodo and, for a little while, Sam. None of the other good guys even wanted to touch it. Gollum just didn’t know how dangerous it was. Isildur, the first human to carry it, was a good guy before he got the ring. But once he had it, it corrupted him.”
    â€œThen he shouldn’t have messed with it.”
    â€œHow could he have known? You might say, Jason, that the most evil thing the ring does is take people who were good, or who wanted to use the ring to do good, and change them. And that once they’re changed, they can’t go back. Not all the way. Gollum had that ring for hundreds of years.”
    â€œI’d never let it change me,” I said.
    â€œA lot of people think that. Boromir thought it. But you can’t know until you go up against the power of the ring, and most people lose that fight. Everyone except Frodo