Hal and Pemulis on quitting

The single moment the dead father breaks the surface of a long argument about whether Hal is an addict. Pemulis is working to convince Hal that quitting everything cold would kill him inside — cataloguing addicts he watched "die inside" back in the neighborhood — and reaches for Himself as the ultimate cautionary case, a man who quit and did "a Clipperton." Hal snaps: his father didn't get sober, there was Wild Turkey on the counter by the oven when he put his head in it, so don't "kertwang" me with him. What lands is that Hal defends his father by insisting on the drink — the counter-fact that his Da died drunk is oddly protective, a way of keeping Himself out of Pemulis's argument entirely — and Pemulis's retreat ("what I know about your Da could be inscribed…along the rim of a shot glass") concedes the point: the father is exactly the thing between them that can't be used as evidence because it was never really known.