At each motel I stayed on the way there, I gave them my new name: Samuel Gurson. I liked the name because it didn’t sound rich. In the restaurants where I ate, men sized me up and considered me fit for small talk. I told them that I was Sam and that I wasn’t much of a talker. I still hadn’t full confidence in my new voice then. These strangers told me stories about their lives. I cribbed some of their stories as my own.
The time alone on the road enabled me to construct my new past:
Yeah, people called me Sammy when I was younger.
Yeah, I used to play sports when I was a boy.
Yeah, I had a sweetheart but she went and married someone who came back from the Great War.
Yeah, I once lived on the outskirts of Detroit.
Yeah, I was orphaned at an early age and put in a fancy boarding school
