Uncle Butch, Rest In Peace.

I only remember meeting my dad's youngest brother, Butch, once. My dad and I had driven across the state to Hammond, where my Grandma Mary was having some medical problems. Her home, at the time, was a small apartment in an assisted-living complex just down the hill from her old house.

When we walked in the front door?I was about 10, I'm guessing?Butch was sprawled out on the couch. He looked like my dad, except that he was rail thin, and had a lot more hair. When we showed up, he rolled off the couch, an ungainly mess of arms and legs, then rose only to a crouch, loping across the floor to shake my hand. He gave it a brief but firm shake, and didn't look me in the eye. I'd heard so many whispered stories about him over the years, I was a little awed.

He was unshaven, his hair uncombed, and his work shirt and jeans clearly hadn't been changed in days. What I remember about him most, though, were his shoes?they were the first thing I saw when we walked in, poised on the arm of the sofa. Big, heavy things, scuffed and creased, with thick black soles. They could've been military issue (he spent a brief stint in the Air Force), or they might've been prison issue. Butch had had his share of brushes with the law.

He spoke with a heavy drawl, too?quite unlike anyone else in the family. I guess that came from living down South as long as he had, drifting from Florida to Texas to New Mexico and back again. He even might've spent some time in Hawaii once. He followed the warmth.

I'm not sure what happened to Butch along the way, but something went wrong. I asked my dad on our drive back to Green Bay a few days later, and all he said was that Butch had taken some money that didn't belong to him. Whose money and how Butch ended up with it, he didn't say. After that incident, nobody heard from him very much. He didn't show up at family gatherings, and his name rarely came up in conversation.

They did hear from him once in a while, though. Once a year, once every two on average. There would be a phone call out of the blue, usually while we were eating dinner, and it would be Butch. Most of the time he told one of three stories: He was in jail (drunk and disorderly, some grifting); he was in the hospital; or he had found himself a great job and everything was super. Whatever the case, almost without fail, he would ask that my dad wire him some money. After getting off the phone with my dad, he would call my Uncle Gene and tell the same story. Then Uncle Gene would call my dad, and they'd compare notes. If Butch claimed to have a good job, my dad would call the place, only to discover that Butch had never worked there, or had been fired after a day.

Sometimes we'd hear from one of Butch's ex-wives, or one of his kids, asking if we knew where he was, and if not, could we let them know if we do hear something. Most of his ex-wives, from what we could tell, seemed like very nice people.

I had a youthful romantic's fascination with Butch?and admittedly, it's still there to a certain degree. Drifting the way he did, getting by lord knows how, living his life like a character in a noir film or a pulp novel. What's not to like about that?

Once in a while to this day I'll ask my parents if they've heard from him recently. In most cases they haven't, but even if they have, my dad just sighs and says, "I just don't know if I can believe anything he says."

My favorite Butch story came up maybe 10 years ago. My dad got his usual dinnertime call from Butch, who said that he was in Florida, but that he might be headed north for a while. It seemed fairly innocuous at the time?I don't even think he asked for money.

Ten minutes after hanging up the phone, it rang again. This time, it was either Butch's current wife or current girlfriend (I don't know if that was clarified), asking if we'd heard from him. My dad told her that why yes, as a matter of fact, he just had?but that Butch had been a little vague regarding his exact whereabouts. Then he asked her why she wanted to know.

That's when she told him that Butch had just left her, stealing her car (and a few other things) in the process, and that now there was an APB out for his arrest. Cops all over Florida were on the look-out for my Uncle Butch.

Even my folks had to admit that it was all kind of funny, and I thought it was cool as shit. It was like having Steve McQueen as an uncle.

We never found out how that story ended, but when they heard from him again two years later, it was clear he hadn't died in a gun battle with Florida state troopers. No, now everything seemed to be the same as it always was. I think he was in Texas again, and had a good job.

Most of what I know about Butch I pieced together only years later. I'd heard my parents talking from when I was very young, but the details were always just out of reach. Maybe that's why I was so fascinated?there was this aura of danger and mystery about him. A relative of mine was an honest-to-god outlaw. When I pictured him in my head, I saw the same skinny, haggard, Tom Neal-ish Uncle Butch I met almost 30 years ago. I'm sure if I ever met him now, and if I ever knew all the facts, the true story would be an unbelievably sad one.