Al Pangborn

Al Pangborn, the surviving son of Alan Pangborn and Annie Pangborn, is a seventeen-year-old student at Milton Academy. His withdrawal from his father’s home and from Castle Rock is not a rejection of Polly Chalmers, as Polly fears, but a response to bereavement and the ordinary, painful movement toward independence. Al’s absence gives Alan’s private grief a continuing shape: his son is alive, yet increasingly far from the town and family life they once shared.

Identity and family background

Al attends Milton Academy south of Boston. His family has been altered by the deaths of his mother, Annie, and his younger brother, Todd, in a car accident. He and Alan drew closer in the aftermath, trying to recover some sense of a family from what remained, but Alan knows that their lives have since begun to move in different directions. Castle Rock is still Alan’s home; for Al, it has become a place burdened with memories.

Al is also connected to a life beyond his father’s household. He has an old friend, Jimmy Catlin, with whom he had shared an interest in computer programs, and he has made a roommate, Carl Dorfman, at school. Those details mark out a world of peers and new affiliations that Alan cannot simply restore by asking his son to come home.

Distance from Castle Rock

When Polly asks whether Al will return for the Columbus Day weekend, Alan says that he is going to Carl Dorfman’s place on Cape Cod. Al had called the previous Tuesday to ask permission to spend the three-day weekend there. His choice is one example of his growing distance, not evidence of a quarrel with his father or Polly.

Al had come home only once since school began again, and that visit had a practical purpose: he wanted to see Jimmy Catlin because some of his computer programs would not run on the new Commodore 64 Alan had bought him for his birthday. The episode helps Alan understand Polly’s concern while also showing that Al’s visits are becoming less frequent and are no longer organized around family life.

Polly worries that Al sees her as trying to take his mother’s place too soon. Alan rejects that explanation. He understands Al’s withdrawal as a broader process: Al is pulling away from his father, his old friends, and Castle Rock itself. Alan describes it as a change that can feel sudden to parents, even when it belongs to a young person’s development. At seventeen, Al seems young to be leaving so decisively, but Alan recognizes that the losses in his family have made his path unlike an ordinary departure for school.

Bereavement and the accident

The accident that killed Annie and Todd also shapes what Alan can and cannot know about Al’s grief. Alan had waved goodbye to them from his study window as they left in the family’s old Scout to run an errand. It was the last time he saw them alive. The State Police estimated from the wreckage that Annie had been driving at high speed; the autopsy later revealed a brain tumor.

Alan continues to wonder whether Annie’s actions before the crash can be understood as deliberate. The seatbelts are central to that uncertainty: Todd had been wearing his, as usual, while Annie had not, although she ordinarily never drove without buckling up. Alan reasons that, had she intended to harm Todd as well as herself, she might have made him remove his seatbelt. The question has no answer in the evidence available to him, and its persistence shows how the accident remains unresolved in his mind.

The family’s deaths leave Al grieving, though Alan cannot be certain exactly how that grief has changed. He believes Al still misses Annie and may be grieving Todd, but does not claim to know his son’s inner life completely. That uncertainty matters: Al’s absence is visible, while its precise emotional meaning remains his own.

Relationship with Alan and Polly

Alan tells Polly that Al’s distance has nothing to do with her or with their relationship. Al is not staying away because he disapproves of Polly, and Alan is relieved when Polly accepts this. Their exchange distinguishes the family’s bereavement from Polly’s fear of being treated as a replacement mother.

Alan also sees Al’s departure from Castle Rock as something he should not obstruct. He had considered whether Al might transfer to Castle Rock High, but the look on his son’s face when the possibility came up quickly disabused him. Alan concludes that the town holds too many memories for Al and that this might change with time. For now, he will not push him to return.

The restraint does not make the separation painless. When Polly asks whether he misses Al, Alan answers simply that he does, every day. He turns away and opens a cupboard at random as he tries to contain his emotion. The moment makes clear that his willingness to give Al space is not indifference: he accepts the distance because he understands it may be necessary, even as he feels its cost.

Narrative significance

Al is presented largely through what his father observes and cannot know. His school, weekend plans, one visit home, and reluctance to transfer back establish a concrete pattern of separation, while Alan’s reflections supply its family context. This limited perspective keeps Al’s grief from being reduced to a simple explanation: Alan can recognize the direction of his son’s life without claiming to possess its full meaning.

The contrast between father and son also gives the family’s losses an ongoing consequence. Alan remains rooted in Castle Rock and returns repeatedly to the unanswered questions surrounding the accident; Al is pulling away from the town and the memories attached to it. Their different responses do not cancel their bond. Instead, Al’s absence becomes part of Alan’s continuing mourning, while Alan’s decision not to press him preserves room for a future relationship on terms Al can choose.