I Am the Cheese

A couple, Arnold and Edna, stop their station wagon. Edna, recovering from a strike, doesn’t want Arnold to check on Adam. She thinks people should stick to their “own business,” but Arnold wants to help Adam get out of the ditch and give him a ride to Hookset—they can keep his bike in the wagon. The car smells like sickly liniment, and Edna feels uncomfortable with a stranger. Adam tries to relax, but he feels carsick. Quietly, he sings “The Farmer in the Dell.” Time passes quickly, and Adam wonders if they’re already in Hookset. Edna says they’re not liars.

In the tape transcript, Adam complains that needles hurt his arms. Brint says the needles countered Adam’s “retreating” into silence, and Adam admits he knows about “the gray man.” Now, Adam thinks he “knows everything.”

Adam connects “the gray man” to the murder story his dad told him of “The Invisible Man.” Police were on the street, waiting for the killer to strike. The murderer came, but no one noticed him, as the perpetrator was the mailperson—someone so regular that they were “invisible.”

The mailperson was like the “the gray man.” He came to their house a couple of times a month. Adam’s mom went upstairs, and Adam’s dad spoke with him downstairs in his office. Dave called “the gray man” Mr. Grey and claimed Grey was the supervisor of his insurance company. Grey visited to work on “confidential reports.” Adam wasn’t suspicious about Grey until after he discovered he had an aunt. The tipping point wasn’t the birth certificates but the concealed family member.

Adam thought of Amy’s Numbers. For another Number, she wrote love letters to a despised teacher, making it seem like the letters were from a male student. The Numbers inspired Adam to do something risky. He went to his dad’s office and tried to listen, but the space was “soundproof.” The door opened, and Adam hid against a wall as Grey and Dave left.

Adam’s dad saw him, and Adam went to apologize, but he heard his dad and mom in their bedroom. Louise didn’t want Grey to come over anymore. She disliked how Grey switched his name to Thompson. Dave believed Grey needed many names to survive. Louise didn’t want to survive: She’d rather live. Dave said they had to do something about Adam. Adam wasn’t a child anymore, and he was probably listening when Louise spoke to Martha.

Adam returned to the office and waited for his dad to come down and speak with him. After Dave arrived, Adam confronted him: He asked about Grey/Thompson and about Martha, Dave said that Adam’s name is Paul Delmonte—Adam Farmer doesn’t really exist.

In the transcript, Adam reveals that his dad isn’t Dave Farmer but Anthony Delmonte, who went to Columbia University and the Missouri Graduate School of Journalism before becoming a reporter at the Blount Telegrapher. Blount is a small town in New York State. The “sharp” journalism diction captivated Dave, and he won the Associated Press’s Small City Reporter of the Year award for a series of articles about corruption in the Public Works Department.

Louise had blue eyes and dark hair. Her mom died while giving birth to her second kid, and her artistic dad had alcoholism and froze to death in the snow. Dave “rescued” Louise, and the couple moved into a five-room house in Blount before they had Adam.

Adam’s dad acquired documents that showed the link between the federal government, state government, and various criminal enterprises. He went to Washington, DC, to covertly testify for a special Senate committee. For a year, Dave hid in hotels. When he returned to Blount, guards protected him. Dave didn’t want to be a hero—he was only trying to be an honorable citizen. Due to his testimony, there were indictments, inconspicuous arrests, and snap resignations.

People tried to blow up Dave’s car, but a local cop thwarted the attack. A hired killer dressed as a cop pointed a gun at Dave as he left the newspaper officer. Grey’s team was there and shot the assassin. Grey worked for the federal government’s Department of Re-Identification. He helped give people new identities and protect them. The office downstairs in Adam’s house was a “safe room.” Grey and his team swept it for “bugs” and used it as a space to have confidential conversations. If they couldn’t speak in the room, then they would talk on the move.

Dave didn’t want to become someone else, and he didn’t want to force his wife and son to change their identities. After someone called Louise with death threats, Dave let Grey change the family’s identities.

Now, the department is professional and efficient. Back then, it was faulty, and Grey’s team “goofed,” like with the birth certificates. Louise didn’t want Adam’s birthday changed from February 14 to July 14, so Grey got another one made. Afraid of more “goofs,” Dave kept both. Grey treated Adam’s family like “puppets.” He gave them the Protestant name Farmer but, since Dave and Louise were Catholic, Grey made them Catholic converts. Adam’s family would stand out in a place like Texas, so they stayed in the Northeast. For further protection, Grey put an article in the newspaper claiming that Dave, Louise, and Adam died in a highway car crash.

Adam enters a drugstore; when he leaves it, his bike is gone. An alley lures him in, and a bigger-bodied man, Arthur, on a fire escape calls Adam “honey” and asks him if he lost anything. Adam explains, and Arthur says people used to steal anything not tied down but now steal something even when it is tied down. Arthur feels like he’s in a cage. Adam wonders if he saw who stole his bike. Adam has a reward of $25. Arthur pronounces “rewards” as “ree-wards,” and someone else inside Arthur’s apartment pushes Arthur to tell Adam who stole the bike. The thief is Junior Varney, who lives next to a Baptist Church.

In the transcript, Brint asks Adam for details about his dad’s testimony. Adam doesn’t know specifics, but he and his dad became close after he learned the truth. His dad thought the Mafia was a generalization—a symbol for complex criminal activity and corruption. Dave didn’t want to stop being a journalist, and his mom didn’t want to leave Blount. Grey kept coming to Monument to update Dave, give him money, and to see if he switched to “the other side” or had further information.

To develop his new identity, Adam’s dad grew a mustache and stopped smoking. His mom and dad never lived in Rawling, but they visited once. Martha was Louise’s only living relative, and she was a nun in a convent, so Grey allowed Louise to have phone calls with her.

Brint returns to the testimony of Adam’s dad and what Adam’s dad knew. Brint wonders if Dave told Grey the truth, and the look on Brint’s face makes Adam think of how his dad described the look on Grey’s face—like that of a “nemesis.” Brint concedes he’s human, and Adam wonders if Brint is his enemy.