The Lost Trail

I went in search of a boyhood friend. But when information is everywhere, some things are better left buried.

- Douglas Preston

Some writers used to drink when the words didn’t come. Now we have the internet. Whenever I get stuck writing, instead of sliding open the bottom drawer with the whiskey bottle, I load up The New York Times or Politico, check my email, or, when all else fails, start Googling old acquaintances. Most of us have done it. What ever happened to that bucktoothed kid from third grade? There he is, grinning at you from the computer screen—balding, paunchy, mustachioed— and you’re reading about his lake cottage, his wood-turning hobby, his Danube cruise, his grandchildren, his cats.

A few months ago, as I was staring at a wretched chapter I was trying to write, I idly Googled the name “Peter Anderson” and “New Jersey.” Petey was my best friend growing up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, until he moved to New Jersey in seventh grade. But his was a common name, and it returned tens of thousands of hits. Slumped in my chair, continuing to waste time, I tried his mother’s name, his father’s, and his brother’s. There were just too many Andersons, though, and nothing of note surfaced, beyond an old article in The Times of Trenton about a murder. This obviously wasn’t my friend Petey: Dozens of other Peter Andersons in New Jersey were probably alive and well and going about their business.

Petey lived across the brook from me in a white stucco house overlooking a golf course owned by Wellesley College. He was a droll kid with pale orange hair and papery skin through which you could see blue veins. He had a cheerful mother and a silent, raddle faced alcoholic father. After work, his father parked himself in a wing chair in the living room, shook out the afternoon Boston Herald, and read it while gripping a scotch on the rocks. When he wanted another, he jiggled the empty glass and Mrs. Anderson hurried in with fresh ice and the bottle.