The boy in the photo

The boy in the photo is 9, maybe 10. He hadn't seen his father in several months, certainly not alone, not since the afternoon with the bullwhip. When he was 12, he became James Ellis Howse, the only one of 10 to be adopted by immediate family. The father - 'Foxy Dan,' the papers would call him, was found dead in Virginia, murder they said. 

The boy in the photo is my father. He died earlier this year, leaving me with more questions than I could have imagined and a desperatation to learn more about the man they found in the dumpster, the grandfather I never knew.