A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention by Matt Richtel Page B
Authors: Matt Richtel
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say anything. He’s got something to hide.”
MARY JANE OPENED THE bedroom door. Reggie was right there on the bed, where she had left him, facing the wall, his phone on the bed, behind him.
“Reggie.”
He half turned. It had been another restless night. He kept replaying the accident, thinking about the two dead men and their families, worrying what might happen next. His mom sat on the bed.
“I think you should go talk to someone.”
He knew what she had in mind. A counselor named Gaylyn White had an office just a few blocks away, behind the office of Russell White, Gaylin’s husband, Reggie’s dentist and a local church leader.
“No.”
“Just to get things off your chest, Reg.”
Something was obviously wrong. Two days after the wreck and Reggie had barely left his room; hadn’t left the house at all. And she didn’t know the extent of his emotions. “I felt like I didn’t deserve to go out there and live,” he says. “Not in a suicidal sense. In the sense that I didn’t deserve to enjoy my life.”
Not when those two men in the other car had no life to enjoy.
Mary Jane left. Reggie thought: Crazy people go get help. Not sane people.
Not guys’ guys. Not athletes, not in Tremonton.
“IF YOU’VE SEEN FRIDAY Night Lights , that was us. Same kind of place, same kind of problems,” says Dallas Miller, Reggie’s best friend. The jocks held sway, but the focus on sports, the all-American veneer, had a dark underbelly, at least from Dallas’s perspective. A lot of drinking—weekend nights downing Keystone beer in the foothills—sometimes driving home drunk—a lot of premarital sex and a lot of pregnancy. “Not to put a bad rap on our town, but, more often than not, not everyone on the sports team was living their religion.”
It was far from everyone’s view. In Dallas’s case, he felt he was in a better position to see past the town’s facade. A rebel from his earliest days, he rejected the Church, thinking it a place for hypocrites who didn’t live the life they preached. At odds with his parents, he spent many nights on Reggie’s floor, sometimes passed out from too much drinking.
In fact, there was a decent chance he could’ve been the one who wound up involved in something tragic. But Reggie? When Dallas heard about it, he thought: “He was the last guy I’d have expected this to happen to.
“He was the kid who always made the right choices, who always did the right thing.”
Reggie could cool Dallas off. In January of their senior year in high school, Dallas, six foot two and 205 pounds, threw the ball in someone’s face during basketball practice, hitting his teammate in the head. The two squared off and a fistfight seemed imminent. “Reggie grabbed me and threw me in the locker room. We had a long talk,” Dallas recalls. He adds: “Reggie was the only person I took advice from.
“He was a listener, and after he did the listening part he would have something to say that was probably in my best interest.”
Certainly not the kind of person who would make a bad decision and kill two men. It must’ve just been a horrible accident, Dallas figured, no one in the wrong, but a tragedy nonetheless.
“I was the wild one. He was the mild one. The good listener.”
REGGIE’S FIRST AND DEEPEST rival was his older brother Nick. People thought Reggie and Nick were twins; Reggie was big for his age, and Nick small. Sometimes they thought Reggie was actually older. They competed at everything, stoked by a culture of competition. “I used to make them fight for crackers when I babysat,” says older brother Phill, mostly joking. “Only the winner got to eat.”
They played basketball and baseball outside and football video games in the house—sitting on the floor or couch, with controllers in their hands.
They got their first console, a Nintendo Entertainment System, for Christmas in the early 1990s. It was a square gray box with rectangular controllers that featured a few
MARY JANE OPENED THE bedroom door. Reggie was right there on the bed, where she had left him, facing the wall, his phone on the bed, behind him.
“Reggie.”
He half turned. It had been another restless night. He kept replaying the accident, thinking about the two dead men and their families, worrying what might happen next. His mom sat on the bed.
“I think you should go talk to someone.”
He knew what she had in mind. A counselor named Gaylyn White had an office just a few blocks away, behind the office of Russell White, Gaylin’s husband, Reggie’s dentist and a local church leader.
“No.”
“Just to get things off your chest, Reg.”
Something was obviously wrong. Two days after the wreck and Reggie had barely left his room; hadn’t left the house at all. And she didn’t know the extent of his emotions. “I felt like I didn’t deserve to go out there and live,” he says. “Not in a suicidal sense. In the sense that I didn’t deserve to enjoy my life.”
Not when those two men in the other car had no life to enjoy.
Mary Jane left. Reggie thought: Crazy people go get help. Not sane people.
Not guys’ guys. Not athletes, not in Tremonton.
“IF YOU’VE SEEN FRIDAY Night Lights , that was us. Same kind of place, same kind of problems,” says Dallas Miller, Reggie’s best friend. The jocks held sway, but the focus on sports, the all-American veneer, had a dark underbelly, at least from Dallas’s perspective. A lot of drinking—weekend nights downing Keystone beer in the foothills—sometimes driving home drunk—a lot of premarital sex and a lot of pregnancy. “Not to put a bad rap on our town, but, more often than not, not everyone on the sports team was living their religion.”
It was far from everyone’s view. In Dallas’s case, he felt he was in a better position to see past the town’s facade. A rebel from his earliest days, he rejected the Church, thinking it a place for hypocrites who didn’t live the life they preached. At odds with his parents, he spent many nights on Reggie’s floor, sometimes passed out from too much drinking.
In fact, there was a decent chance he could’ve been the one who wound up involved in something tragic. But Reggie? When Dallas heard about it, he thought: “He was the last guy I’d have expected this to happen to.
“He was the kid who always made the right choices, who always did the right thing.”
Reggie could cool Dallas off. In January of their senior year in high school, Dallas, six foot two and 205 pounds, threw the ball in someone’s face during basketball practice, hitting his teammate in the head. The two squared off and a fistfight seemed imminent. “Reggie grabbed me and threw me in the locker room. We had a long talk,” Dallas recalls. He adds: “Reggie was the only person I took advice from.
“He was a listener, and after he did the listening part he would have something to say that was probably in my best interest.”
Certainly not the kind of person who would make a bad decision and kill two men. It must’ve just been a horrible accident, Dallas figured, no one in the wrong, but a tragedy nonetheless.
“I was the wild one. He was the mild one. The good listener.”
REGGIE’S FIRST AND DEEPEST rival was his older brother Nick. People thought Reggie and Nick were twins; Reggie was big for his age, and Nick small. Sometimes they thought Reggie was actually older. They competed at everything, stoked by a culture of competition. “I used to make them fight for crackers when I babysat,” says older brother Phill, mostly joking. “Only the winner got to eat.”
They played basketball and baseball outside and football video games in the house—sitting on the floor or couch, with controllers in their hands.
They got their first console, a Nintendo Entertainment System, for Christmas in the early 1990s. It was a square gray box with rectangular controllers that featured a few
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