Words From A Beating Heart--Tommy's Travels, Adam's Observations

Hello—
I just wanted to give you a quick update on Tommy. He’s safe with friends in Pennsylvania right now, and he’s going to be sending road reports pretty soon. For reasons known only to him, he was lucky enough to have caught a ride from a sympathetic truck driver he met at a service center on the highway. He said that so far just about everyone he’s met along the road has been very kind and helpful to him which has been great. But he also said he’s seen some horrific evidence of crimes against the undead. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.
Speaking of thoughts and prayers, Adam wanted me to thank everyone who has posted on mysocalledundeath for all of the kind thoughts you’ve sent his way. We both really appreciate it, and I really think it helps Adam as he tries to deal with things now that he’s on the other side of life. The thing that amazes me the most about Adam in this difficult time is how he’s kept his sense of humor. It shows up at really strange times in really strange ways. Like we were watching a basketball game (ok, he was watching a basketball game and I was trying to read) a few weeks ago and every so often he’d make a comment. He doesn’t speak all that much right now—it still takes him a great effort—but during the game he was practically chatty.
The first time it happened I was right in the middle of a really good paragraph so I hadn’t really caught on to what he said, just that he’d spoken.
“What?” I said, looking up.
He nodded at the screen, where a tall man in green was trying to in-bounds the ball.
“Dead…ball,” he said, not looking at me.
A few minutes later he spoke again.
“Watch,” he said. I looked up at the screen as another player in green was jumping and sort of falling back as he shot the ball from far away from the basket.
“Dead…eye,” Adam said as the ball left the player’s fingers. It sailed in a perfect arc into the hoop.
The other team called time out, and after some milling around the station cut to a commercial, and there was a three second gap between the broadcast and the advertisement.
“Dead…air,” Adam said. I made a funny face at him, but when he turned towards me he was completely free from expression.
“I’m trying…to…wink,” he said.
He’s a funny one, when he wants to be.