The time passed agonizingly slow for me, but it did give me time to reflect on my life. The biggest question I pondered was my existence or, better yet, the value I had brought to this world. The more I thought about it the more I convinced I became that my life had created more problems than it ever helped to solve.

My conception had been an act of evil, my birth an accident and my life a series of gut-wrenching experiences cradled between occasional bouts of numbness. Joy and tranquility were two emotions I had yet to experience except for the occasional jolts usually created by my wife or child. Pain was the one emotion with which I was most familiar. I could write a book on the pain I have known during my life.

It wasn’t physical pain that I feared, for I have known a great deal of that and had recovered from all of it. It was the slow torture that accompanies the longing and unfulfilled desires that nibbles on me like an all-consuming rash slowly etching its way across my body. Unfortunately, this rash could not be eased with salve. This was a mind eating all-encompassing yearning to be loved, accepted and to belong. It is that sense of complete loneliness that is so maddening.

I’ve always felt like an outsider looking in on a world of perfection, but never allowed to touch it. I could see it before me. I could smell its intoxicating aroma. I could hear the voices of happiness and feel it blowing softly upon my skin. I was allowed to do everything to it, but that which I most desired, which was to taste the sweet nectar that came from belonging to a loving family.

I wanted to be accepted, respected and loved, not just tolerated. I wanted someone to brag on me and to boast to others about my prowess in one area or another. I had tasted that piece of paradise when I was a child playing Little League baseball and I was willing to trade anything, my life included, to get that feeling back even if only for one hour. The elation I felt during that one time in my life had escaped me for over thirty years and I longed to touch it again, even if it were an artificial saccharin substitute.

I was still sitting in the chair beside her bed, when a nurse came into the room.

“How’s our patient doing today?” she asked as she entered the room.

I put my finger up to my lips. “She’s sleeping and I don’t want to wake her.”

“If she’s sleeping, then that’s good news.” A smile raced across the woman’s face. “Let’s check her out just to be sure.”

“Let’s hope so,” I replied.

The nurse began writing notes on a clipboard. After scribbling a couple of them down on the charts, she looked at me and her smile grew even bigger. “Her vitals are excellent. She should be able to leave the observation room today.”

“Will she be able to go home?”

“No, she’ll have to spend at least two, maybe three, days in here. You know, just so we can watch her and make sure that the baby is doing all right. She’s only got a couple of more weeks before the baby’s due.”

“My luck hasn’t been the best lately.” I said and then laughed a small sarcastic chuckle. “It hasn’t been that good since the day I was born. I expect the worst.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a good feeling about you two. Don’t ask me how I know this, but the Lord has His eye on you two.”

“I’d prefer He look the other way. It’d make things easier.”

“He’s not going to do that,” she said. Her voice was ringing with confidence.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

She smiled at me. “I’ll be praying for her, but I’ll be praying for you even more. The Lord has plans for you, I can feel it.”

“I’d rather be left alone.”

“You’ll change your mind when He gets a hold of you. If you need me for anything, even if just to pray or talk, let me know.” She handed me a business card with her name on it and then left without saying another word.

I took the card not because I wanted it, but to keep from being rude. It read: “Diana Jones, MD,” and I hadn’t got past the name before I inserted in my wallet. I felt foolish and wondered if I had called her a nurse during our talk. Unsure about it, I let it go thinking she had no right to interfere with my business and thus deserved it were I rude to her.

I was still pondering the conversation I had with Dr. Jones when Jennifer began to stir. I heard her mumbling and felt her grip my hand. I looked at her and noticed her looking back.

“Hey you,” I said. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“I must look a mess. I hate having you see me like this.”

As she spoke, some of her hair dropped across her face. I reached up and gently wiped it to the side. “You still look like that girl in the purple bikini I took with me on my honeymoon to Cancun.”

“Only, this one is now forty pounds heavier and packing a few more wrinkles.”

“Perhaps,” I agreed, “but I like my maps with a few lines on it.”

She looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face. “Just what does that mean?”

I laughed and then answered. “I don’t know, but my dad used to say it to my mother.”

“It’s good to see you laugh even if it is a forced one. I’ve been worried about you lately. Your world is falling apart and you don’t have anything to anchor it to.”

She reached up and cupped my face in her hand. “You’re a strong self-reliant man, but you can’t handle this by yourself. Nobody can.”

Tears began to form in my eyes and my body began to softly quiver as I listened to her. How was I supposed to tell her the truth? How was I supposed to tell her that despite my façade of bravado and strength, I was a frightened little boy that was going through the motions of life not because he had to, but because, I didn’t know what else to do?

I took her hand into mine, brought it to my lips and kissed it. “You don’t mind if I give it a try, do you?”

“No, but you don’t always have to pretend to be strong. Haven’t you heard? Women are attracted to the sensitive type. That’s what I fell in love with when I met you. You put on this tough guy act but deep down inside you’re a kind, vulnerable little boy. It’s that little boy that makes my blood boil. He’s the one I fell in love with, not the he-man you want the world to see.”

I took a deep breath to compose myself. “Let’s not talk about me. How’re my babies doing?”

It was her time to hesitate. I could now see the pain in her eyes. “I’m fine, but I’m worried about the little one. Were she all right, they’d be sending us home instead of keeping me here all this time.”

“That’s merely a precaution.”

“Maybe, but I’ll feel better once a doctor tells me both me and the baby will be fine.”

“I want to lie to you and tell you that will be the case and I believe it will, but I can’t say for sure. I know the doctors are optimistic because I just talked to one a little while ago and she was thrilled with your readings.”

“Good,” she replied.

She took my hand and kissed it. We sat there in silence until she fell back to sleep. I held her hand and was still holding it when her mother came into the room a couple hours later. I was about to fall asleep when she entered.

“Randy, how’s my baby?” asked Lola as she entered the room. Her appearance looked disheveled and sloppy. I was used to seeing a woman that was immaculately dressed at all times. Also, her gray hair was not styled and precisely combed as it usually was.

“You okay?” I asked not used to seeing her looking so sloppy.

“I’m fine. How’s Jennifer?”

“They’re still worried about the baby, but Jennie’s fine. Where’s Homer?”

“He’s looking in on Kieran.”

“I’ll take him, if you want?”

“No, you need some sleep. When’s the last time you’ve had a good night’s sleep?”

My eyes widened and I hope that I didn’t come across as a smart aleck. “What year is this?”

Apparently it worked, because she smiled and then spoke. “You need to get home and get some sleep.”

“But who’s going to watch Little Man?”

“Homer and I can take care of him until you get some rest.”

“I don’t want to leave in case they get news about the baby,” I protested.

“We can call you the instant we find out. Now, go kiss the boy and get on home.”

I hesitated at first and then, reluctantly agreed. “I’ll only be gone for a couple of hours at most.”

“Take your time, we’re not going anywhere.”

The wind struck me like a slap to the face as I exited the building. It must have been twenty-five to thirty degrees colder than the night before. Snow flurries were falling around me and I shivered as I struggled to adjust to the change in temperatures.

As I started to enter my Jeep, I noticed that the front window was starting to ice over. Streaks of snow and ice bolted across the front window like flashes of lightening on a dark summer’s night. I watched one vein of frost inch its way downward from the top of the window. As it neared the center of the glass, I stuck my finger in front of the path it was following. Thinking that would stop the slow crawl of the ice, I smiled and thought to myself that God must feel like this when He terrorizes me.

I kept my finger there and waited to see what would happen. Several other flows of ice followed the same path as the stream that I had stopped. I was watching them to see if they would stop at the same place as the first one, but they didn’t. The point where I placed my finger had destroyed the first flow, but its destruction had cleared a path for the others to go around my finger and thus continue towards their goal of reaching the bottom of the window.

As I pondered this, an epiphany him me like a nuclear bomb exploding in the middle of the night. Like a lunatic pitching a fit of complete lucidity, in one instant, everything became perfectly clear to me. Like the ice droplet, I was being persecuted by God, but unlike me, the droplet’s sacrifice had protected the rest of the droplets and that’s when I realized that my sacrifice would protect those that I loved.

I began to ponder this and in a rush of translucent madness, my mind saw things fall into perfect order. Was I without sin? The answer, of course, was that I wasn’t, but I had always tried to live a good and honorable life. After all, I was honest and respectful to my parents and tried to be a good father and husband. Therefore, I did merit some righteousness. Therefore, if Jesus laid down his life to save the whole world, wouldn’t the sacrifice of my life be enough to save my family.

The more I thought about it the clearer it became. God was demanding a sacrifice in order to be sated. The idea of a human sacrifice had crawled into my mind and burrowed itself deep down into my very soul. I became angry with myself for not committing to this course of action before hand.

That was it! I’d stumbled upon the truth. The only way to please God was to sacrifice everything to Him. Didn’t the Bible say that you had to be dead to the world to please God? A feeling of peace and joy – that which I’d never experienced before – was radiating from me like heat from the sun. At that instant, I realized that with one little act, I could remove the curse from my mother, ensure my loved one’s peace and success and remove God’s thumb from upon my family. “If He wanted a sacrifice, then by Hell, He was getting one!”

When I got home, I flicked on the computer. Once the screen came on-line, I called up a blank Word document and began writing a letter to my wife and children.

Dear Jennifer, Kieran and Emily,

Randy

I signed the letter, folded it and put it in an envelope. I taped it up and wrote Jennifer’s name with a magic marker on the outside of the letter. I went looking for a thumbtack so that I could fasten it outside the bedroom door. Before I pulled the first tack out of the packet, I wrote, “Don’t let Kieran in here to see,” under my wife’s name.

I was still fumbling for a thumbtack when I heard the doorbell ring. At first, I thought I was imagining it, but who ever it was, they kept pushing on the bell. That was something that only Kieran and his friends did. Thinking it was one of the neighborhood kids, I walked to the door so that I could open it up and shoo whom ever it was away.

I was shocked to find my son and mother-in-law standing in the door.

“Lola, what are you doing here?” I asked. I wasn’t even trying to hide my shock at seeing her. “I thought you were watching Jennie.”

“She’s still about the same,” answered my mother-in-law. “Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong. Little Man wouldn’t hush until I promised to take him to see his dad. He’s a bit worried about you. He’s afraid something is going to happen to you. I told him that I’d bring him here to see that you were all right. And, besides, I don’t like using public toilets. I thought I’d bring him here to see you and use the bathroom as well.”

“So, you drove twenty minutes out of your way just to go to the bathroom?” I asked and tried not to laugh, but failed.

She looked at me as though she were sizing me up and then she spoke. “Do you mind?”

“No, no, I just find it odd. I think you worry too much about germs and such.”

“She made me wash my hand ten times this morning,” piped Kieran. “She made me put hand stuff on my hands before and after I tied my shoes too.”

She smiled at me sheepishly. “You can never be too cautious; germs can be deadly.”

“So can a meteor from the sky,” I injected, “but you don’t see me building tunnels to keep one from hitting me on the head.”

Lola harrumphed. “Well, just shoot me if I’m concerned about my family.”

“I’d rather just shoot myself and get it over with,” I said and then laughed.

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” added Lola jokingly. “Jennifer and the babies would get all kinds of money in life insurance and retirement plans.”

She laughed, but I gave her a thoughtful look. “They’d never have to worry about money again that’s for sure.”

She laughed even louder and then abruptly stopped. She waved me off with a flip of her wrist. “Enough of this foolishness, I need to get to the bathroom. Step aside Randy.”

I bowed to her as if she was the Queen of England. As she walked by, I tilted my head and whispered, “Have at it milady.”

After she made it past us, Kieran looked at me and smiled. “Want to play dinosaws? You can be the brachiosaurus and other gloop-duh-glooes and as you walk by my T- Rexes and Allosauruses will jump out and eat you.”

“Why can’t I be the carnivores?” I asked even though I knew the answer before I posed the question.

“Because you are big and slow like the sauropods. When I walk, I can’t say, ‘gloop-duh-gloooooo’ like you can when you walk.”

“So you’re telling me that because I’m bigger and slower than you I have to be the gloop-duh-glooes.”

“For a little while.”

We were playing when Lola came back down stairs. “Randy, have you eaten?” she asked.

“I’m not hungry. I am tired. I’m planning on taking a nice long nap. You know the kind that will make your troubles go away.”

“Honey, when you discover the secret to that one, let me know. We’ll market that under ‘Randy and Lola’s Sleep Remedy.’ We’ll be billionaires in no time flat.

“If you’re not hungry, then I guess we’ll get back to the hospital.” She motioned for Kieran to follow her. “Come on Little Man. We need to get back to the hospital to see how momma is doing.”

“But I want to stay and play with dad,” rebutted Kieran. “We just started.”

I cupped his face in my hand and stared straight into his eyes. The instant I looked into those deep chocolate eyes he inherited from his mother, part of me wanted to back out of the pact I had made with myself. As I thought about it, tears began to drift down my face. I pulled him into me.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.” I said it three times because my uncle once told me that in Biblical times a phrase utter three times meant permanence and could not be broken. Even though Kieran didn’t understand what I was saying, I knew and better yet so did God. Surely, He’d see that I was willing to sacrifice myself for this wonderful child.

As my child pushed himself away from me, I kissed him on the forehead. “I love you my beloved son and know that everything I do is out of love for you, momma and the baby. Tell mom, I love her and the baby, okay?”

“Okay,” he repeated, but couldn’t have understood the significance of that moment.

Fearing that Lola might get an inkling of what I had planned, I stood up and said, “Look, I’m tired. I’m going to bed. You go with grandma and she’ll bring you back this evening when she comes back.”

“But I want to stay and play,” protested Kieran.

“I know, but dad is tired.” Without saying another word, I patted him on the head and then took one more look at my child.

I took an extra minute to memorize his face. His teeth would soon need braces and there was a gap on the right side of his mouth where he had recently lost his last tooth. His face was oval like mine, but those deep chocolate eyes and brown hair he got from his mother.

I trembled when I realized this would be the image I would carry with me into eternity. I smiled because that some how seemed to be the most appropriate vision to take with me into the great unknown. Part of me still doubted my plan, but that vanished as well when he smiled back at me and I knew that for the first time in my life an angel was watching over me. That angel was Kieran.

“I need some sleep,” I managed to say before I choked on my words.

I made my way to the master bedroom and closed the door behind me. I listened at the door for a few minutes. They were arguing. She wanted him to go with her and he wanted to stay behind. She urged him to go and even tried to bribe him into going, but the argument continued until her cell phone rang.

There was silence for a few seconds and after that, I heard her say. “Come on, the doctor is supposed to make a decision on the baby in a few minutes. Your dad is in bed so you have to go with me.”

I knew from the sternness in voice that my child wouldn’t argue. He didn’t. She had taken him with her even though he hadn’t wanted to, but she cajoled him into it. I listened for another few minutes and when I was satisfied that I was alone. I stumbled to my bed and placed myself top of it.

I lay there struggling within myself. This bed and been both a comfort and a prison to me the last few days and I was beginning to hate it as much as I hated myself. I slapped it as hard as I could before I crawled out of it and made my way to the closet located just off of the master bathroom.

Once in the closest, I reach up to the top shelf and pulled down a small wooden box that contained the memorabilia from my stint in the Marine Corp. I fumbled through it until I found that for which I was looking. I found a heavy piece of crimson velvet cloth that was tied by a small olive colored ribbon. I pulled the string to the bow that tied the ribbon to the cloth. As the fabric pulled away, I began to caress its content; a Glock 9mm pistol.

My wife hated guns and refused allow them in the house, therefore, I kept this one hidden from her in order to give both of us piece of mind. I ran my left hand over the weapon as I cradled it in my right. I did this for several seconds before I gripped the pistol.

I slid the pistol in into my trousers at the small of my back. I then went and opened the bedroom door. I tacked the envelope to the outside of the door, took a deep breath, looked at my hallway one more time and shut the door behind me.

As I walked to the bathroom, I pulled the pistol out of my pants. Holding the pistol in my hand, I stared at myself in the mirror. I began to cry as I realized that I was the reason for my mother’s shame and my family’s curse. I had always known that I was an outsider, but not until two days ago did, I know why. I spat at myself in the mirror and I cursed the day I had been born.

Not knowing what else to do, I stuck the barrel of the pistol into my mouth. I could taste the oily bitterness of the cleaning fluid I used to preserve and protect it. As I stood there and fought within myself, part of me wanted to end the pain and thus release the curse that was upon both my family, and me but another part of me wanted to live, after all, I had so much for which to live. I had a beautiful wife, a wonderful son and a daughter on the way. Over the next few minutes, these two forces fought like demons as each tried to force its will upon the other.

I pulled the weapon from my mouth and lowered my head. Unsure of what else to do, I began to pray. “God, if you really exist, please help me. I don’t want to die, but can’t think of one reason of why I should live. I have been nothing but a plague and a curse on my family. It would have been better had I never been born.

“You’ve never shown that you care, why should you show me now? All I’m asking for is a sign. If you really exist and you really care about me, then show me a sign. Just one, that’s not too much, is it? Give me just one reason to live because, right now, I can’t think of one.”

I waited for the sign, but after ten minutes, it never came. That silence bombarded my soul like an unimaginable evil barrage let loose on my very being. It convinced me that God Himself was waiting to see my demise. This angered me and I began to stew on that anger as I waited and waited. When the bolt of lightning or voice of God never came, I put the gun back into my mouth and closed my eyes.

“Thanks, God,” I whispered as I realized that the one miracle I had hoped for was definitely not coming.

With God’s failure to materialize before my eyes, I cursed myself for being fool enough to even hope He’d listen. Therefore, I began to slowly pull back on the trigger. As the trigger started to offer resistance, I heard a soft set of knocks being tapped upon the bedroom door. Tap, tap, tap they went as I eased off the trigger puzzled by this turn of events. Thinking that I had imagined those thuds, I put my finger back on the trigger and waited. A few seconds later, another set of knocks came and this time they were accompanied by my son’s voice calling. “Dad, I need you.”

Not sure if I was hearing that correctly, I took the gun out of my mouth and listened. I could hear the roar of a mufflerless car whizz by and I could hear the sound of a helicopter passing overhead, but I could hear nothing else. There was no voice on God in these thunderous sounds. As I tried to clear the cacophony of noises from my head, a small, but unmistakable voice whispered in my mind, “I love you. I died for you and I have big plans for you. Come into my peace and see for yourself.”

I thought about getting out of the vehicle and going back and knocking on the door, but I didn’t. I sat there staring at the window like a child glaring at his closet door for fear of the boogeyman coming out of it when he’s not watching.

I spent at least ten minutes debating whether I should go check on her or not. The argument we just finished was a pattern we had fallen into decades ago. She’d become angry over something that wasn’t my fault and then blow up at me. I’d give her time too cool off and then go her in order to apologize for something I hadn’t done. After that, I’d promise to try to do better. She’d growl about it, but would forgive me for not being able to stop the event that upset her. Sure, it was a love based upon domination and manipulation, but when you’re desperate to be loved and accepted, any love will suffice even if that relationship is a poisonous one.

I looked at my watch to see what time it was and it was a few minutes past noon. I looked back up at the picture window and noticed that she wasn’t there. “If she’s not going to work on it, then I’m not either,” I thought. Without saying another word, I put the vehicle into drive and eased out of the driveway and onto that wandering country road. A few miles down the road, I pulled off at a secluded spot and cried for several minutes before I decided to head back home to Lawrenceburg.

I pulled into my drive just before four in the afternoon. As I killed the engine, I’d look at my reflection in the review mirror. My eyes were red and puffy and my face seemed to have aged ten years.

I tried smiling because I didn’t want Jennifer to see me like this. I’d always been a solid rock for her and I didn’t want her to see me crumbling. Also, I wanted the boy to see me as a man who could handle any situation and were he to see me crying like a baby, it might hurt my standing in his eyes, or that was the lie I was telling myself. I gently slapped my face several times. “Get a grip on yourself,” I said as I tried to force a happy look upon my countenance.

As I entered the house from the garage door, Kieran ran up to me and jumped into my arms. “Hi, dad, I’ve been waiting on you. I need some help with my homework. I hate homework.”

I pulled him in close to me and began to squeeze him in tightly. He returned my hug, but only for a second. He then pushed me away and began to look into my eyes.

“Why have you been crying?” he asked with as much tenderness as a seven year-old could muster.

“I’ve not been crying,” I lied.

“Uh-huh,” he countered. “Are they happy tears or sad tears? Momma says there are two kinds, you know?”

“Happy ones, definitely.” I pulled him in closer and whispered to him. “You are the most important person in my life. Who do I love more than you?”

“Nobody.”

“That’s right. And, what can you ever do to make me stop loving you?”

“Nothing.”

I smiled as much of the tension in my body began to ease. “You sure have all the right answers,” I commented to him.

“That’s because you told me what to say.”

I laughed aloud and I felt the day’s anger and pain slip from my mind. I’d put them away for now and would deal with them at a later date. Caught up in the moment, I was content to bask in my son’s total adoration.

“Eskimo kiss!” I shouted as I began to rub my nose against his.

He pushed away from me after a second or two. “After that, can we go play with my dinosaurs? You can be the gloop-duh-glooes and I’ll be the carnivores. And, I’ll hide and wait for the brachiosaurs to come out and play. And, as they go walking down to the river, they’ll be singing gloop-duh-gloo and I’ll jump out and eat ‘em.”

“Can I speak to your mother first?” I asked as I set him down.

“Only if you make it snappy.”

“I’ll try.”

I patted him on the forehead as he turned and headed back down the hallway. I then looked at my wife. She had just entered the hall and I could see a look of concern on her face. I found comfort in her gaze. No matter what else happened to me, I still had the love of these two people and I was grateful for that. God could destroy everything else, but these two were untouchable. I’d see to that.

“How’d it go?” she asked. I could hear the caution in her voice.

“Don’t ask.”

“Why? What happened down there?”

I looked at her and gave a small laugh, but it was one born out of frustration rather than hope. “I really don’t want to discuss it right now. I’ve got plans to have a bunch of large dinosaurs be eaten by a herd of meat-eaters.”

“Won’t you at least tell me how you feel?”

“Like everything is my fault and isn’t my fault at the same time. I feel like I could scream, but know that won’t help. I guess mostly, I’m numb, and just need some time to figure things out. And, I’m mad at God. If He loves me so much, then why is he doing this to me?”

“Maybe He’s working on you. God can’t work with you until He breaks you. Maybe He’s trying to do that?”

“He broke me weeks ago. Now, He’s just piling on and He knows it. If you ask me, this thing between the two of us is personal.”

She laughed tenderly. “Now you’re getting it. With God, it’s always personal.”

“Personally, I wish He’d just leave me the hell alone. I’ve taken His best shot and I’m still standing! I don’t fear Him. What else can he do to me?”

“Don’t talk like that! Are you crazy? If you tempt God, He’ll destroy you.”

I began to laugh. It was a maniacal crazy laugh. The kind that comes out of a man whose mind in not all there and what is left is consumed with a combination of fear and anger. “What else can he take from me? I’ve taken His best and all I know is that the God of love hates me above all other people, why else would He do this to me?”

“Because He has plans for you and the more broken you are the greater you will be when He rebuilds you.”

“I’d rather be dead than submit to Him.”

“Don’t say that,” she croaked and I could see genuine fear in her eyes. “Don’t challenge Him. Here’s one battle you can’t win.”

I laughed aloud. “I’ve already won. I don’t need Him and I hate Him as much as He hates me.”

“Then, I’m truly sorry, because He’s about to shake that pride out of you and I hope I’m not around when He does it.”

“Then, I welcome the challenge,” I said defiantly.

She looked at me with terror in her eyes. Without saying a word, she turned and walked away from me.

I silently cursed myself for being a fool. She was a wonderful wife and was not deserving of the dressing down I had just given her. I wasn’t angry with her, but I had taken my anger for God out on her. Heck, I needed her now more than any other time since I’d known her. I thought about stopping her and apologizing for my words, but was afraid I’d say something inappropriate so I let it go.

As she started up the stairs, I turned and went back into my office and began searching my database looking for clients that I thought would come with me now that I had been forced out at Cosby and Associates. The first name I for which I searched was Adolph Fields.

Once I found his name, I picked up the phone and began dialing his number. After three rings, a stern female voice came over the line.

“Fields Energy, may I help you?”

“May I speak to Adolph?” I asked.

“Mr. Fields is in a meeting. I’d be happy to take a message for him?”

“My name is Randy Johnson. Could you tell him I called?”

“Are you Vernon’s boy?” she asked. Her voice seemed to soften. It wasn’t as formal as it had been.

“Yes, I am.”

“He was hoping you might call. Make you a deal. I’ll take down your number and have him call you, but if he hasn’t called in an hour, call him back, okay?”

“Sure, my number is easy to remember. It’s (502) 555-1234.”

“Got it. Thanks Randy and I’m deeply sorry about you father. He was a wonderful man.”

“Yes, indeed.”

I hung up without saying another word. I was about to search for another possible client when the telephone rang. Thinking it was Mr. Fields, I picked it up without even looking at the caller ID.

“Randy Johnson,” I said into the mouthpiece. “May I help you?”

“Randy, its Alex,” rang my brother’s voice in my ear.

“Alex, is that you? Why are you calling at this time of the day?” Alex was one of the tightest people in the world when it came to money. He hated to spend it and even prided himself on his tightwaddedness. If he were calling at this time, something had to be wrong.

“It’s momma,” he said. “She’s in the hospital at Hazard. They think she’s had a nervous breakdown.

“What happened?” I asked even though I knew that it was me who had pushed her over the edge.

“We don’t know. Janice took the afternoon off from work. She found momma lying in the fetal position when she came home from work. She’d stopped by Subway to buy us some sandwiches for lunch. She figured she get momma that bologna salami one she likes. When she dropped it off, momma was lying on the floor mumbling like a crazy woman.

“Janice tried to work on her, but realized that there wasn’t nothing wrong with her physically. So, she called the rescue squad and they sent an ambulance to come and get momma. Once they got there, the EMT’s realized the problem and took her to the psyche center over at Hazard.”

“She gonna be all right?” I asked.

“Don’t rightly know right now. We’re in front of the hospital. I couldn’t get no reception from inside the building and am barely getting a signal in front of it.

“They’re supposed to let us know just as soon as they figure out what the problem is. The second we find out we’ll let you know.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Randy, if it weren’t for bad luck, we’d have none. I’ve never seen things this bad in my life.”

“You’re a Johnson. That’s kind of our lot in life. God blessed us with tons of luck, unfortunately it’s all bad.”

“I gotta let you go big brother. I love you.”

“You too, Alex.”

As I put the receiver back into its cradle, I raised my head and looked upward. “Way to go God!” I shouted. “Way to prove Your love for me. I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy inside just thinking about it.”

Too exhausted to deal with all the problems racing around in my mind, I walked over to the sofa at the far end of my office and collapsed unto it. I was so spent by the day’s events that I wrapped my arm over my eyes and was fast asleep before I even had time to think about them.

I was awakened by the telephone. As I was coming out of the sleep, I heard the answering machine pick up the call. I started to go pick up the receiver but thought better of it. As I rolled over to go back to sleep, I heard a voice come on to the line.

“Mr. Johnson, my name is Sergeant Michael Miller with the Frankfort Police Department. If you could give me a call at your earliest convenience, I’d like to talk to you.”

The police, I thought. I wonder what they want. The voice on the other end of the line answered my thoughts.

“There’s been an accident and …”

I never heard the rest of that sentence because I jumped up off the couch and raced to grab the phone before he got off the line. By the time it took me to cover the six feet between the couch and the desk on which the phone set, my heart was racing like the wind.

“Hello,” I said. I began trembling as I dreaded what was coming next. Surely, something had happened to my mother.

“Mr. Johnson?” came the voice.

“Yes,” I replied.

“My name is Sergeant…”

“I heard that,” I interrupted. “What was it you said about my mother?”

“It’s your wife, sir.”

My heart nearly leaped out of my mouth and my knees nearly buckled under me. “Wh-what about her? Is she all right?”

“I don’t know,” was his response. “She’s at the Medical Center in Frankfort and she’s getting the best care she can possibly get.”

“And the baby, what about the baby? Is it okay?” I was beginning to panic and had to force myself to try and remain calm.

“The boy is fine. We have him at the station. An officer has been looking after him. You can stop by and pick him up at any time. Do you know where we are located?”

“Yes, yes, you didn’t answer my question. Is the baby all right?”

“I wish I knew, but we have an officer at the hospital. She was stationed there just in case you came in looking for your wife and child. I’ll have her come pick the boy up and…”

“What about the baby? I need to know about her. Is she all right?” Part of me was becoming angered by this man’s refusal to answer my question. Therefore, I began to speak louder hoping that the tone would get through to him. “What about the baby?” I shouted as loud as I could and spoke each word slowly so that he would understand.

“I don’t know,” he responded flatly. “Are you okay Mr. Johnson? We can have someone pick you up if you are unable to drive.”

“I’m fine,” I snapped even though I was not angry with the man. I hurt so badly that I wanted to scream at some one and he just happened to be handy.

“Good, we’ll have Officer Higgins stop in and pick up the boy. He’ll be in good hands with her. She’s one of the finest officers we have in the department. She’ll be waiting for you at the Emergency entrance. Is that understood?”

“Emergency Entrance,” I said without really knowing exactly what I was saying.

“Good, now be careful on your way in. The child doesn’t need both parents in the hospital. He’s and awfully fine boy.”

“Thank you,” I said and then hung up the phone.

Twenty-five minutes later, I was sitting under the stop light located next to the hospital. I was waiting for the light to turn green. I don’t remember much of what transpired from the time I hung up the phone to the time I reached the light, but I do remember what happened at the light.

As I sat under what had to be the longest light in the history of mankind, I began to ponder the day’s events. In less than a month, I had lost my father and a woman who loved me more than my own mother does; I found out the I was a bastard and the product of an illicit affair and a rape; I had been fired from the greatest job I’d ever had; my mother had gone crazy; and now, I was racing to the hospital not knowing if my wife and child were alive or dead.

The more I thought about it the angrier I became. My anger was not a scattered angry thrown around in a haphazard manner. It was a solid laser focused anger aimed squarely at my tormentor, God. How could He claim to be a god of kindness and mercy when all he ever did to me was to pour out anger and contempt upon me?

As I thought about it, I raised my fist in defiance and looked towards the sky with vengeance in my heart. “Way to go God! Show me your love. If this is all you’ve got, then all I can say is, bring is on!”

As the light turned green, I shook my fist at God once more before I made my way towards the hospital. I drove the few hundred feet from the light to the parking lot entrance and then followed the signs to the ER.

As I pulled my Jeep into the front of the emergency room, I noticed a strikingly beautiful black woman standing outside the entrance. She was wearing a well-fitted police uniform that complimented her outstanding figure very well.

She made her way towards my vehicle as I began to exit it. “Mr. Johnson,” she called as she approached.

“Yes,” I said. “Are you Officer… forgive me, I forgot your name.”

“That’s all right you’ve got a lot on your mind. The name is Latricia Higgins.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m glad to meet you but not under these circumstances.”

“Where’s Kieran?” I asked.

“Forgive me,” she returned. She slowly pulled her hand back to her. “I left him inside. We gave him some coloring books and colors…”

“Thank you,” I said as I made my way past her and into the ER waiting room. Unsure of what else to do, Officer Higgins followed me.

I noticed Kieran sitting in a chair located under the wall-mounted television at the far end of the waiting area. He was wearing a small cloth police cap and had a plastic badge pinned to his chest. Sitting beside him was a small stuffed animal dressed in Kentucky Wildcat Blue. Officer Higgins later informed me that it was department policy to give children brought into the station a stuffed animal. She stated that they gave a few hundred away each year. All of them were either purchased by the police officer’s themselves or else donated by private citizens or local churches.

“Kieran,” I called the instant I saw him.

He looked up at me and shouted, “Dad.”

We both began running at the same time. We met some where in the middle of the waiting area. As he jumped into my arms, I pulled him into me and began smothering him with kisses even though I knew this would embarrass him. Something was telling me that the kisses would ease both our pain and believing that with all my heart, I over did it hoping that I could kiss away the pain that was about explode from out of my soul with nuclear force.

Once I thought I was finished, I gave him a couple of more kisses just to be sure. He began speaking before I finished. “Momma and me were hit by a big van.”

“I know,” I responded even though I hadn’t known that. “Are you okay?” I held him back from me so that I could get a good look at him. He appeared to be fine, but I still was uncertain about it.

“The doctor said he’d have a few bruises, but other than that he should be fine,” said the police officer.

I looked at her and smiled as tears began to form in my eyes. “Thank you very much,” I attempted to say, but choked on my own words and managed only to get out, “Thank much.”

She smiled. “It was my pleasure Mr. Johnson. Kieran is a wonderful boy. I enjoyed hanging with him.” She looked at my son and winked at him. “We had fun didn’t we baby?”

My son nodded his head in agreement.

“I’m deeply indebted to you and the department,” I mumbled as I fought to hold back the tears.

She waved me off with a flip of her wrist. “That’s what we’re here for.” She ran her hands through my son’s hair. “Kieran, if you’ll stay here with me, we’ll let your dad go check on your mother.”

I looked at her with what must have been a shocked look on my face because she laughed. “He’s too young to visit her in the observation room,” she said. I could hear the tenderness in her voice. “Somebody’s got to stay with him and I’ve been assigned this duty and besides I like being with him. We’ve already discussed it and he’s agreed to stay here and color with me what time you go check on your wife.”

“Yeah,” stated Kieran in an excited voice. “Latricia is going to show me how to make a paper airplane.”

I looked at her and then pulled her in close and hugged her. I didn’t know how else to thank her. She was hesitant at first but, once she realized what I was doing, she relaxed and returned my hug. As I let go of her, she smiled and both of us knew that I’d be forever grateful to her for her kindness.

As I released my grip, she shooed my away with a flicker of her wrist. “Now get up there and check on your wife and baby. He’ll be fine with me.”

“Yeah Dad, Latricia is going to take me to the cafeteria and buy me an ice cream,” shouted Kieran.

I tried to say something, but the combination of gratitude and fear overcame me as I searched for the right combination of words to tell this remarkable woman how truly grateful I was for her kindness. She must have sensed what I was going to say because she mouthed the words, “You’re welcome. It’s truly been my pleasure.”

I acknowledged her continuing act of kindness with a large smile and a soft tap to the right side of her face. She gave me the thumbs up sign as I turned to head to the help desk.

The elderly woman at the help desk was more than helpful. She called the observation room and checked on my wife. Once she realized where they were keeping my wife, she asked one of the clerks to watch her phone while she walked me to where they had my beloved wife.

I stood outside of my wife’s room for a couple of minutes before I went inside. Part of me was rehearsing what I was going to say to Jennifer were we to receive bad news concerning the baby. I thought about praying, but didn’t. My mother had always prayed during an emergency and looked what that got her. No, I wasn’t about to kowtow to some being that hated me as much as God hated me. I’d just continue my war with Him until one of us gave up and left the other alone.

Still, thoughts of the baby filled me with fear and doubt. If it were true, that I was a curse and a plague sent by God to rain terror on those that I loved, then might not this just be another incident in a long and unbroken line of progressively more deadly occurrences that had haunted my family since my unnatural conception at the hands of drunken a rapist and an adulterous woman. Given my history, could I expect anything but bad news?

Resigning myself to my fate, I took a deep breath, wiped the tears that had formed in my eyes, forced a smile upon my visage and entered the observation room.

As I neared the bed upon which she was lying, I stopped for a second and whispered, “Jennifer, are you okay?”

When she didn’t answer, I moved up beside her and whispered again. “Jennifer, its Randy. How are you doing?”

Again, she didn’t respond. I spoke to her a third time before I noticed she was a sleep. I stood over her and began stroking her hair. As my fingers slid through her chocolate curls, I began to think back to the first time we met more that fifteen years ago. The first time I saw her she had her back to me and I remember thinking, how beautiful her hair looked. It was glistening off the sun and I wanted to walk over and stick my nose in her hair and smell it. I figured a mane that beautiful had to smell as wonderful as it looked. After we started dating, I would learn that her tresses did indeed smell as wonderful as they looked. It would be her hair and memories of those long thick rich locks that would hold my attention all these years. It’s strange what your mind will lock on and retain in your memory. It still amazes me that it was her hair and not her wonderful face or incredible body that first attracted me to her.

I was still running my fingers through her locks when a nurse entered the room. “Are you Randy?” she asked.

“Yes, why?”

“I have a telephone call for you. It’s a Homer and Lola Bates and they’re asking to speak with you. Do you want to talk to them?”

“That’s my wife’s parents. I’ll talk to them. How’s my wife doing?”

“She’s fine, but we’re keeping her in here but are getting ready to transfer her to a room upstairs. We want to make sure the baby’s doing okay before we let her go.”

“How long is that going to take?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “A day, maybe two, but I don’t think she’ll be in here over three. Well, if there ain’t no complications and such.”

“So, the baby’s doing well?”

“We don’t rightly know. That’s the problem. We’re reading good vitals, but we won’t know for sure until some other tests have been done. You need to get that phone. The head nurse don’t like to have her telephone tied up too long.”

“Thanks,” I said not knowing what else to say.

“They’ll be fine,” the nurse said with such an air of confidence about her that I almost believed her. “I’ve been praying for her and God’s let me know that both she and the baby are going to come out of this okay.”

“Thanks.” I wanted to tell her that were God putting His nose into my business, then nothing good could come of it, but appreciating her confidence, I held my tongue.

“Where’s the phone?” I asked.

“This way,” she replied as she motioned for me to follow her. I followed her to the nurse’s station and once there, she picked up the phone and pressed one of the lines and handed it to me without saying another word.

I took it and began speaking. “Hello.”

“Randy, is that you?” It was my mother-in-law, Lola.

“Yes.”

She interrupted before I could say another word. “How’s Jennie?”

“She’s fine. They’ve got her in observation right now. They’re monitoring the baby to make sure it’s okay. They don’t know right now. They say it’s too early to tell, but should something happen they’ll have her ready to go to surgery just in case.”

“What happened?” she asked. I could hear the fear in her voice. “What was she doing out at this time of the night?”

“I don’t know. Kieran said they’d been hit by a van or truck, or something like that. He didn’t get a scratch and I don’t know what happened to the other guy.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Where is Kieran? I want to speak to him. I want to hear his voice.”

“He’s with a local police woman. They’re down stairs right now. I’ll take my cell phone down to them in a minute and have him call you. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, but have him call me on my cell phone. Homer and I’ll be leaving here in a minute. We’re heading your way.”

“There’s nothing that you can do. You don’t need to be out and traveling at night.”

“She’s the only daughter I’ve got. I’m coming and that’s that.”

“Okay, but be careful.”

“Thank you. Take care of Kieran and we’ll be there directly.”

“Do you know where the hospital is located?”

“Homer looked it up on the Internet. We’ll find it.”

“Be careful,” I warned.

“We will.” She hung up before I could say another word.

I put down the receiver and began walking back to the observation room in which they had Jennifer. As I got to the door, I could hear voices. My heart leaped to my throat when I heard my wife’s voice. It was shallow and weak and sounded as though she was talking through a pipe, but it was her nonetheless.

I began to tremble when I heard her speak. This was the first piece of good news I’d had in a month. Something deep inside of me whispered, “Thank God,” when I heard her voice, but the anger buried in my soul pushed that thankfulness out of my system. After all, wasn’t God the cause of all of my problems in the first place? With that, I shook my head in order to clear it of such foolish thoughts. Once I’d done that, I entered the room.

As I entered, I noticed a nurse appeared to be checking my wife’s blood pressure while a second one seemed to be taking readings from some of the machines they had hooked up to monitor Jennie. The one working on my wife was talking to her and they both seemed to be smiling. Taking this as a good sign, I began to speak.

“Is that my beautiful wife’s voice?” I asked. I was doing my best to put up a false front of courage and optimism, but understood that she knew me too well to fall for such an obvious charade.

“I don’t feel pretty,” she said. “I feel pregnant and ugly.”

“But you’re still the most beautiful woman in the world to me.”

“You got a good one,” said the nurse taking her blood pressure.

“I know,” replied my wife. “I’ve been working on him for years.”

“You must be doing something right,” responded that same nurse. She then looked at me. “You ready to spend some time with her?”

“Always,” I replied.

“That’s the first lie he’s told you,” injected my wife. She laughed at that and both nurses joined in with her. I stood there smiling, but not at that statement. I was smiling due to the absolute joy that came from knowing my wife was going to live.

The nurses hurried to finish up and then made their way out of the room. The nurse that had been talking with my wife when I entered the room winked at me and said, “Take care of her, she’s been through a lot.”

I nodded my head to indicate I would and she patted me on the shoulder as she exited the room.

I stood there next to the door staring at my wife. She locked on to my gaze and we stood there for several minutes. Each one of us wanted to say something, but each one feared breaking the moment. Some time over the last few years, we’d learn to accept each other. Once we did that, silence became as much of a communication device as words. In the past, we couldn’t be in the same room without chattering at each other, but now, we were perfectly comfortable with those bouts of silence that are inevitable when people grow accustomed to each other.

I was the first to break the silence. “What happened?”

“You were asleep and I needed some milk and juice. I didn’t want to wake you, so I loaded the baby up and drove to Wal-Mart. At that light on Main Street, a delivery truck slipped on some ice and slid into my Explorer. He tore it all to pieces.

“I don’t remember much after that. I awoke in the ER and asked for Kieran. I wouldn’t hush until they brought him into see me. He was being taken care of by this nice police woman.”

I laughed. “He still is and they’ve become fast friends.”

“We’ll have to get her a gift or something to show our appreciation,” stated Jennifer.

“Deal. How about you?”

“They say I’m fine, but they’re worried about the baby, but I’m not.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I put her in God’s hands and there’s no safer place in the world to be than there.”

“We don’t have to talk about that,” I said trying to avoid any conversation with God in it.

“I’m sorry, Honey. I know you think God hates you, but He doesn’t. He loves you more than anyone else loves you and that includes me and Kieran.”

“Sure,” I mumbled. “I just wish He’d prove it.”

“He does that every day,” replied Jennifer and with that, she laid her head on a pillow and within seconds was sound asleep.

I walked over to her, kissed her on the forehead and then began to whisper in her ear. “I’d settle for one answered prayer. That would be proof enough for me. Just one unexplainable answered prayer that’s all I ask. If He could do that, then I’d believe He loves me. All I see is His anger and hatred, but I want to believe that He loves me. I really do. I want to be loved and not have Him hate me as much as I think He hates me. All I ask for is on undeniable answer to a simple prayer. That’s not too much to ask for, is it?”

“No, I belong to my mother all right.”

My wife looked at me with her big brown eyes, which narrowed in an expression of deep thought. I watched as she rolled my words through her mind. I could tell she was about to grasp my meaning when all of a sudden, her eyes shot wide open as though she’d been punched in the gut.

“You’re kidding,” was all she could say.

We stood there in an awkward silence which seemed to last forever. It was eventually broken by her. “You mean she had an affair?”

“And was raped by her lover.”

“And, what does that mean?”

“She became preg…” I couldn’t proceed. I choked on my words and could not force them through the lump in my throat no matter how hard I tried. I stood there covering my face with my hands the way a broken hearted child does when she doesn’t know what else to do.

“Pregnant with you,” interrupted Jennifer as she wrapped her arms around me and began to whisper soft words to me.

I felt like a man that had just been told that he had less than a week to live. It was as though the weight of the world had fallen on me. For over forty years, I had lived a lie and now I hated my mother and father for allowing me to live it.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t cry. No matter how hard I tried, the tears refused to come. The odd thing about it was that the only part of my soul that wanted to shed tears was that part deep down inside, the part that I had buried because I was afraid of it. That part of me wanted to cry not out of pain, but out of a sense of relief. I finally understood the reason I had been considered a plague and a curse to my mother. I had served as a constant reminder of her indiscretions and failures as a wife.

As I thought about it, rage began to erupt from me. I wanted to grab my mother and shake her. In my mind, I pictured me doing just that, but an odd thing happened. The image in my mind that I saw of my mother was one of her in pain and carrying unjust shame and just as quickly as my rage came, it left to be replaced with a sense of pity and sympathy for the woman who bore me. In a split second, the anger and rage passed and was replaced by a sense of guilt. It was at this instant that I realized that even though I’d never had a say in the matter, I truly was the source of my mother’s shame and was indeed a burden to her.

That realization hit me like a runaway coal truck. I was the black sheep of the family! I was the outcast and I was a vivid reminder of all that had gone wrong in their marriage. As these feelings washed over me like a tsunami, I began to hate myself. For the first time in my life, I began to wonder about the nature of my very existence and its continuance thereof.

Had I not been born, then none of this would have ever happened. Had I not been born, then my father would not have carried that secret with him to the grave. Had God been merciful, I would have never lived to see the light of day and thus would have saved all those I loved the misery my very existence created.

In my mind, I began to curse the day I was born. I also began to curse God for allowing me to be born. What kind of being would allow a person to see this much pain? Where was the love for which He was supposed to be so famous? If this was His idea of compassion, then He could have it.

An epiphany hit me as my wife tenderly spoke to me. God didn’t exist. He couldn’t; no one could be that cruel? Why had He allowed me to suffer over forty years of pain without ever trying to do something to ease that sorrow? No, were He to exist, then He would have done something to ease my pain many years ago. It was at that instant, at that exact millisecond, I realized the truth about it all. I made myself a promise that I would never belief in God and there was nothing He could do to convince me otherwise.

My heart filled with hatred for Him and I silently curse Him for all that He had done to my family. From the rape of my beloved mother to the cruelty inflicted upon me by those around me, He had sat back and laughed as this circus of wretchedness played out like a cheap soap opera in front of Him.

“It’ll be all right,” whispered Jennifer. “We’ve got each other, Kieran and little Emily when she gets here. We’ve got a lot to be thankful for, don’t you think?”

“Why should I be thankful? I’m certainly not thankful to God! For what, pain? Over the last few days, He’s taken my father from me. He’s taken a woman that loved me more than my own mother does. He’s shown me that I’m nothing but a source of pain and shame for my mother. What else can He do to me? He’s already proven His hatred for me. He can’t do much more than that.”

“Randy,” snapped my wife in a loud voice.

I was startled by her words. They snapped me out of my funk long enough to look in her eyes. I could see her lips quiver and her eyes twitch.

“Don’t you dare try to tempt God! You won’t like the results of it.”

“I already don’t like the results of it! Besides, if He hates me that much, why doesn’t He just end it all and be done with it?”

“He doesn’t hate you, but I do believe He’s working on you. He’s got a plan for you and He needs to break you so that He can use you. God can’t use a person unless they’ve been broken.”

“Broken,” I whispered and then let out a soft but maniacal laugh. “If He needs to break me in order to use me, then I must be the next John the Baptist. What else is there? Even if He wanted to use me, I hate Him so much I’d rather die as to serve Him. I guess His plan backfired because I’m at the point to where I’d rather go to Hell than serve such a being.”

“Don’t say such things! God will not be tempted.”

“Like I fear Him!”

“You should.”

I laughed not because I found her words amusing. I laughed because I could think of no other way to keep from crying.

“Come get me!” I shouted as I looked up towards the ceiling and held my arms open wide. “Come get me because you’re not going to break me. Take me to Hell and be done with me. I defy you and want nothing to do with you. I don’t even believe you’re real. I know you won’t answer my prayers, so, who cares about you?”

“I won’t listen to this,” shouted my wife. “If you tempt God like that, then He’s obligated to straighten you up and I don’t want something to happen to the children.”

“He hates me and not the children. He loves you and the kids. It’s me He wants to destroy. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Jennifer let go of me and stepped back away from me. I looked at her face as she slowly moved backwards. Her eyes were as wide as saucers and her face was ghostly pale. Her right eye was flittering like that of a madman. She tried to speak, but her lips convulsed and she swallowed her words.

“What?” I asked. “It’s the truth. God is a fake!”

She put her hands to her ears and ran out the door. “I won’t listen to this foolishness. You’re going to live to regret those words.”

“I already do.”

As she made her way down the hall, Kieran met her at the kitchen. “What were you and dad fighting about?” he asked his mother.

“Go ask your father,” replied Jennifer as she ran past him and made her way up the stairs.

He looked at me and asked, “Why are you and momma fighting?”

“We’re not. Not really. We were disagreeing on something.”

“On God, right?”

“Yes, son, on God.”

“Dad, do you hate God?”

“No, but I think He hates me.”

“God loves you. Why else would He let Jesus die for you?”

I could see the confusion in his eyes so I walked over and put my arms around him. I’d never felt so ashamed in my life. “You’re right, daddy’s been a fool.” I cupped his face in my hand and raised it so that he could see me. I smiled at him. He smiled back and I could see the doubt pass from his face. “Will you forgive me for being so foolish?”

“Always,” was his angelic response.

I pulled him into me. “I love you,” I whispered through a lump in my throat.

“I know. Us boys have got to stick together, don’t we?”

“You betcha.”

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what was going on with my life. I decided that I needed to deal with my mom face to face. That evening I called into work and left a message on the voice mail. I told them that I would be taking a few days off to deal with some personal issues regarding my family.

I was in my own world for the rest of the night. Kieran, enjoyed the time I spent with him because we played with his toy dinosaurs for several hours. He would give me an herbivore dinosaur and he’d pretend to be a carnivore. Of course, his always ate the one I was holding. Even though I was not there mentally, my son didn’t care. He had someone with whom he could play and that was all that counted to him. When my wife called for him to come and bath before going to bed, he stood up and hugged me.

“Thanks, dad,” he said. “This was the best day ever.”

As he pulled back from me, I drew him into me. “Who do I love more than you?” I asked.

“Nobody,” he responded as I had hoped.

“And don’t you ever forget that.”

“I won’t. Did you like playing with the dinosaurs?”

I pulled him into me once again. “You and momma and the baby make life worth living.”

“Are you being silly, dad?”

“No, thankful that you are my boy.”

Tears began to stream from my eyes. They didn’t go unnoticed by my child.

“Dad, why are you crying?”

“I’m not.”

He touched my face with his index figure and caught a tear that had been meandering down my face. “Then, what is this?” he asked as he held his finger up for me to inspect.

“Fountains of love, my boy.”

“Are they good tears or bad tears?”

“Both.”

He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the forehead. “Don’t ever be scared dad; I’ll be here for you.”

I pulled him in close to me and nearly squeezed the breath out of him. As I held him, I knew that at least this aspect of my life was on track. Despite all that had happened to me during the last few days, I still had a family that genuinely loved me and I was thankful for that.

“I love you,” I whispered into his ear.

“I know,” he whispered back.

“Now, go bath and get ready for bed.”

“If you’re scared, you can sleep with me tonight.”

I looked into his face and saw genuine concern. I smiled at him and gave him a wink. “I’d like that.”

“I won’t let nothing bad happen to you, ever.” He smiled and then tried to look tough. “If something bad happens, I’ll use my lightsaber on it and make it go away.”

I laughed at his statement and then looked at him with a new found respect. “I believe you would.”

“Us guys take care of each other and don’t let nothing happen to each other, do we?”

“That’s right now go bath.”

It was tough sleeping with him on a racecar shaped twin bed, but I did manage to catch a couple hours of sleep here and there. I woke up once at around three-thirty. He had his legs resting on my face and he was lying sideways on the bed. I carefully corrected his sleeping position and began to gently stroke his head.

I spent the next hour or so reflecting upon his childhood. When I first found out that I was going to be a dad, I began to think of all of the things I was going to teach him. I naively assumed that I had enough life experiences to teach my son what it takes to be a good man, but the thing I never expected was all the things my son has taught me about being a good father.

He’d taught me way more than I had ever taught him. Now, here he was teaching me another lesson and that was that a child’s love knew no boundaries. He loved me unconditionally, and I felt the same about him. Despite all the pain I had experienced the last few weeks, I found unfathomable joy in the love that my son offered. It was his love that was carrying me through this time of pain and doubt. Once this thought hit me, the pain I had been carrying lessened at least enough for me to go back to sleep.

I kissed him on the forehead prior to going back to sleep. Somewhere in that twilight world where the mind is not quite asleep yet not quite awake, something whispered into my ear and told me that my son had been given to me by God to act as my savior during the worst crisis of my life. Although, I don’t believe in angels, I filed that thought in the back of my mind. How could a child who’s favorite words in the world were, “Dad, need you,” save my life? Still, it was a nice thought and I desperately needed such thoughts, therefore, I held on to it when I probably should’ve let it go.

The next morning I was awakened by my wife. “Randy,” she said, “Denver, is own the phone.”

“What does he want?”

“I don’t know, but he didn’t sound happy. You should talk to him.”

I shrugged my shoulders and eased my way out of bed and made my way towards the living room.

Denver Cosby was the senior partner in the firm. He and his cousin had started the firm over thirty years ago. His origin partner, Jason, had died ten years back. Currently, the firm had seven partners and I was the only one that wasn’t a blood relation to the Cosby family. I had grown the business by twenty-five percent since joining the firm five years ago and that was why I made partner.

“Hello,” I said.

“Randy!” shouted Denver. “Why aren’t you here? You know it’s tax season and you should be reporting to the office at six o’clock. It’s now fifteen to seven.”

“Didn’t you get my message?” I asked.

“What’s so personal that you think you can take the day off? Do you know how much time you’ve missed already?”

“Yes, but I can explain…”

“Explain nothing! You’ve got fifteen minutes to get to this office or you’re fired!”

“I can’t do that. I have to go back home to Eastern Kentucky.”

“Then pick your stuff up when you go!”

“Is that how you feel?” I asked.

“If you can’t uphold your responsibilities, then I don’t need you.”

“Fine!”

I heard a click before I could say another word.

“What was that all about?” asked my wife.

“They just fired me.”

“What!” I could see the pain in her eyes as she spoke. “Why would he do that?”

“He said I’ve been missing too much work during a critical time.” I spoke in a calm rational matter even though part of me wanted to scream from the hurt and anger that had just been added to an already heavy load. I had done more for that business than any other person there with the sole exception being Denver himself. How could he fire me?

The instant I had that thought the answer came to me, it was God’s will. The kindly and loving being had struck out at me once again. The instant that thought hit me my pain changed to defiance. If war was what He wanted, then that was what He would get. If He thought that would beat me, then He had another thing coming.

“You need to call him back and explain your situation,” shouted my wife. Her face was etched with fear and doubt. She looked as though she had just lost a loved one. Her lip trembled and her body quaked.

“I can’t.” I said defiantly. “I’ve got enough clients that are loyal to me. I can get them to join me when I start my own firm. I don’t need them. I can make it on my own.”

“What will we do until then?”

I put my arms around her and gently pulled her into me. “I don’t know, but we’ll make out just fine, that I promise you.”

She didn’t say a word, but I could hear a soft moan come from her. I also felt the rising and falling of her shoulders as she gently cried.

“There, there,” I whispered. “Adolph Fields wants me to handle his accounts. We can live well on that account alone. My family will come and so will at least four other major clients and a couple dozen smaller ones. We can make it I tell you.”

She started to say something but began to softly beat on my back with her hands. “Randy, what’s going on between us?”

“It’s not us,” I replied. “This is God’s fault and no one else’s.”

“Don’t blame God!” she shouted.

“Okay,” I said even though I knew that He was to blame.

She hugged me tightly and then pushed me away. “I need to go wake the baby,” she whispered.

“I’ll get ready and then head towards mom’s.”

“Be careful.”

“I promise.”

Within half an hour, I was shaved, showered, making toast and pouring myself a glass of orange juice. As I was slathering a spoon of peanut butter on the toast, my son entered the room.

“Good morning, dada.”

“Hello, son. Who do I love more than you?”

“Nobody.”

“And, no one else.”

“Will you take me to school?”

“If you want me too?”

“Today, Kyle is supposed wear his hair blue and white like the UK Wildcats. I can’t wait to see it.”

Ten minutes later I dropped him off at the front door of Emma B. Ward Elementary. “I love you,” I said as he crawled out of the back seat.

“I know,” he replied as he closed the door and then waved to me.

I spent the next three and a half hours rehearsing what I was going to say to my mother when I saw her. I played out various scenarios in my head. I imagined how things would go were I confrontational, conciliatory, contrite or straightforward. I envisioned each one a dozen times and still hadn’t decided on my course of action when I turned right off of Kentucky Highway Eighty and on to Rural Route Seven. As I stopped at the bottom of the exit ramp, I thought to myself that I’m at least a local phone call away should something happen.

I was less than thirty twenty minutes from home. Knott County was about five miles away and from there the Isaac’s Fork Road and mom’s house was less than a twenty minute drive.

I stopped at the Garret Chevron Station and filled up with gasoline. I also purchased a sandwich, a root beer and a bag of Uncle Ray’s barbeque potato chips. I was getting nervous and was hoping to delay things a bit longer so I talked to the store clerk what time I ate my lunch. When I couldn’t justify delaying any longer, I thanked the clerk and got back on the road.

I pulled into my mother’s driveway less than half an hour later. As I made my way up the steps, mom met me at the door. I could tell by the look on her face that she was worried about something.

“Randy, what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk with you, if I could?”

She became cautious as I spoke to her. “About what?” she asked.

“Me, I need to talk about me.”

“What about you?” Now fear was etched upon her face and I thought that she might bolt like a frightened rabbit.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It looked to me as though she was trying to blow her very soul out of her body.

“Dad had written me a letter a while back…”

“And you came to ask me about it?”

Genuine terror now shown upon her face and at that instant I knew that the letter contained the truth. The look upon her face hit me like an army tank and my legs wobbled under me and I nearly collapsed. I steadied myself on the metal railing connected to the steps. It took me a couple of seconds, but I was eventually able to regain my bearing.

I looked at her and with all the compassion I could muster, I said, “I don’t have to. I can tell by your reaction that it’s true.”

“So, now you know. What are you going to do about?” There was anger and fear in her words.

“Do you think this makes me a terrible mother?”

“No, but it does explain some things for me.”

I hadn’t meant for my words to sting her, but apparently they had. “That’s right; I’m a terrible mother and a low down slut. Does that make you happy? I’m a lying, cheating rip.”

She stepped out onto the porch and shouted as loud as she could. “You hear that world? My son thinks that I’m a dirty man grubbing tramp!”

Things were not going as planned and they had gotten way out of hand. I decided to try and calm her down so I climbed the steps and then reached out to hug her, but she pushed my hands away and slapped me.

“You’ve been nothing but a plague on me since the day you were born. I wish you had died before you were born.”

“So, do I.”

“At least we agree on something.”

I looked at her with a combination of pity and disgust. I was amazed by her brazen attack on me. She became angry and released a verbal barrage upon me and it was accompanied by several hard blows from her fists to my chest. For some unexplainable reason, I took it. I didn’t fight back, but stood passively by what time she physically attacked me. I watched her carrying on like a mad animal. She did this for about five minutes before she stopped and looked at me. As she focused on me, her eyes began to narrow and I could see shear hatred in them. I was startled by that realization because I knew her hatred was geared towards me instead of herself.

For the first time in my life, I began to fear my mother. Over the years, her mind had twisted things so wildly that her self-hatred had been turned to focus on me. Perhaps that was how she was able to cope with things, I don’t know.

What I did now know was that I had been wrong about myself. Since my earliest recollections, I had blamed myself for her problems when in fact I was the innocent one. I had been the result of and not the cause of her problems. The second I realized this, a since of relief and pain washed was over my body like a title wave and I began to laugh.

It was not a mocking or evil laugh, but one born by the sense of liberation and release that was now flowing through my soul. My laughter confused her and she stopped shouting long enough to look at me. Apparently, my lack of hatred frightened her so she went back on the attack.

“You,” she spat. “You always acted like you were better than the rest of us! You’ve always lorded your superiority us. You act as though you’re the king of Siam. You don’t have a clue what it’s like for the rest of this family. You’ve always pretended to be something other than what you are; a dirt grubbing hillbilly from the Mountains of Eastern Kentucky. I bet you even pretend to be from somewhere else when you are away from here. You’ve even lost your accent; the one thing that set us apart from everybody else.”

“Special,” I retorted. “No, I don’t know what it’s like to be special, but I do know what it’s like to be the outcast. The one standing on the outside looking in; the one who wants to belong but always knew he didn’t.

“How dare you say I don’t know where I come from? I’m a hillbilly and proud of it. I love these mountains, soup beans, fried chicken and corn bread. I even know my heritage. It’s Appalachian in general and Scots-Irish and Highlander in particular.

“You accuse me of being above my raising, but I’m not. I’ve spent my entire life trying to fit in and have failed miserably at everything I’ve done.”

“Failed,” she retorted and then rolled her eyes. “You’ve always got everything you ever went after. That is except for fitting in and being a member of this family. True mountain people know that life is hard and that we are near the bottom of the barrel and family is all we have. We know our place in this world and that is with family. You’ve always tried to live above yours!”

“Ughhhhh,” I screamed as I cradled my head in my hands in order to keep it from blowing off the top of my shoulders. “I set out to accomplish so much with the hope of fitting in. I knew that unless I did something special, you’d never look at me the way you look at my brother and sisters.

“I wanted to be loved. I knew I could never get the unconditional love you showered on them so I was willing to take conditional love. I knew the condition was that I had to be rich and successful. That’s why I’ve tried to do things beyond the rest of the family. I wanted to be loved and not just tolerated. I wanted your approval and to be part of this family!”

She shot me a look that was pure hatred and then an evil smile slithered across her face. “Well, you’ve failed at least one thing, then, haven’t you? Now get off my porch and don’t you ever step foot on it again.” She then hissed at me and slammed the door in my face.

My heart stopped beating the instant I heard those words. It didn’t skip a beat; it actually stopped beating for several seconds. My entire system nearly shut down as her words began to bury their selves deep within my soul.

At that point, everything that had ever happened to me made sense; it was as if the clouds parted and God whispered the secrets to the universe in my ear. She didn’t hate me. She hated herself. Her loathing of me was merely an offshoot of the self-hatred she carried within her.

They say salvation comes quickly and for me it was a bolt of lightning. In that instant, I knew the answer to every question I ever asked. I knew the truths that all men seek and I knew at that instant that hatred was real and that God hated me. It was then that the madness or was it lucidity crept into my mind.

It was then that I knew I had been born to bear the sins of my family. It would be my sacrifice that would wash away their sins. It would be my crimson blood that would be used to cleanse their stained souls. It was then that I promised myself that I would be master of my destiny and would not God to dictate terms to me. I controlled my own life or death and I wanted the pain to end. I knew that I was going to end His amusement by destroying the object of His cruel pleasure.

The first couple years of our marriage were wonderful. I worked hard and made a good living and your mother kept a wonderful house for us. Once you kids starting coming I thought that I was the luckiest man ever to have walked the planet. Those were the happiest days of my life.

I want to tell you that what happened is not your mother’s fault, it was mine. I accept responsibility for everything that happened. I’m to blame and no one else. I want you to understand that before you go any further.

I stopped there and tried to ponder what he was going to say next. I was getting close to what I had always wanted. I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck and my body was tingling with a combination of fear and excitement. I was also having trouble controlling my breathing.

“Tear it up and throw it away right now,” I thought to myself. For a split second, I almost did it, but this was what I had been hoping for all my life. Therefore, I had to press on in order to get at the truth.

I put the letter down on my desk and walked into the bathroom. I turned on the cold water and scooped a handful and splashed it on my face. I then dried it with a hand towel. As I started to exit the room, I felt my stomach wince. I ran to the commode and draped my head over the bowl. With a violent involuntary action, I regurgitated the contents of my stomach. After the initial blow, I went to wipe my mouth. As my hand raced across my lips, my stomach convulsed again and an even greater amount of chunks emitted from what seemed to be my very soul. I would repeat this action two more times.

Once I could vomit no more, I reached out and flushed the contents of my stomach down the drain. As I watched it swirl around the basin, the only thing I could think was that I needed to chew my food better.

After a second flush, I went back to the sink and scooped a hand full of water and began to gargle it. I then walked over and spit the contents into the commode. I would do this several more times. After that, I would double flush again and then brush my teeth.

It took several minutes before I was able to go back to the letter. Like a boxer before a match, I had to pump myself up before I was able to take it in hand. I had to reassure myself that this was what I had to do. I began to gently slap my face as I tried to build up my courage. Never had I been so frightened, but yet, so determined to see something through. It took a while, but eventually, I was able to return to the letter.

About a year before you were born, I began making week long to two week long trips to our various construction sites. I should have been at home, but I wasn’t. I should have been taking care of my family, because if you don’t someone else will. I’ll explain this later on.

I guess your mother was lonely and depressed.

I stopped before moving on to the next sentence. Unsure of what else to do, I began crying. My entire life I had been lived trying to live it in a sinless manner and I had failed miserably. A sinless life was the only way I felt I could fit in with my family. I had grown up with the notion that I was the only real sinner in my family. Now, I was being told differently by my own father. I was devastated to find out that my saintly mother had done such a thing as that which I was now suspecting she had done. Except for the animosity between us, which I always assumed was my fault; I’d never known my mother to do anything that could be hurtful to other people.

I had never thought that my mother was capable of sin. I knew I was. Most people I know like to compare themselves to other, usually more wicked, people. That way they get to be self-righteous in their own eyes. I, own the other hand, have compared myself since childhood to my mother. She was saintly and almost God-like, whereas I was nothing but filthy rags in comparison.

I’d always saw the negative of my personality and not the positive. Whether that was due to the fact that my mother liked to point out my flaws or to that I was conscious of them, I’m not sure. But, of this I am sure, I knew I was capable of sin from a very young age. All I can tell you is that since childhood. I saw myself as the epitome of a sinful person and that was the type of person God hated above all others.

I tried to be good. I wanted to be good, but had yet to succeed, even for an hour. Now, here I was finding out that my mother, who was right up there with God and Jesus, was a sinner like me. Knowing that should have made me feel better about myself, it didn’t. It made me hate myself all the more. After all, I may have been the reason she sinned. The way I saw it was that I not only had my own sins to pay for, I also had the added burden of paying for hers as well.

I struggled to breathe as the weight of what I was about to read hit me like a speeding train. How could I carry that extra weight when I could barely carry the burden produced by my own sins?

I guess your mother was lonely and depressed. She had to have been or she would never have let him into the house. The girls were at her mother’s house and one of her cousins was supposed to stay with her that night. Rita had called and said she was on a date and would be in late. Since she had nobody else to talk to, your mother let Larry into the house.

I don’t want you to think that your mother did anything wrong because she didn’t. He tried to come onto her, but she refused his advances and he became angry. This upset your mother and she told him to leave. He refused and then in a drunken rage he raped her.

I nearly passed out when I read that last sentence. At first I thought I had misread it, so I read it a second, and then a third time. Each time is said the same thing and that thing was that my mother had been raped by a man she thought was her friend.

I hate to admit this because it probably reveals how depraved I truly am, but I was both angered and relieved by that bit of information. I was angry at my mother for being so stupid as to be alone with a man that was not her husband. I was also relieved to know that she had not had an affair with him. But, I was boiling over with rage towards this Kane fellow. I was so incensed by him that I could have spit venom.

I began reading the letter again. I was hoping to find out where this Larry guy lived. Once I did that, I was going to pay him a little visit and he was not going to like the outcome, of that I was sure.

Rita got a hold of me at about two o’clock that morning. I had been working on a project in Dayton, Ohio. After I got off the phone with her, I went and banged on the door of one of the foremen’s rooms. I told him that there was an emergency and that I was heading home. He promised to let the crew know. The trip from Dayton to home normally took about seven hours. I made it in less than five. There were times when I was doing over 100 miles and hour. I got stopped once by a cop and he let me go when I told him that I was rushing to a family emergency. He warned me to be careful, but I paid him no mind.

Here comes the hard part of this letter. I hope you’re sitting down because this next part is going to knock you off your feet. I pray that one day you can forgive me for what I am about to tell you.

I stopped and closed my eyes. Do you want to go through with this? I thought about it for less than an instant and then put it out of my mind. I knew I was going to proceed, but needed some time to gather up my courage. I began to look around the room. I don’t know why I did it. It was as though I was expecting God to be in the room. That way He could tell me that I should proceed.

I laughed at my own silliness. It was a chuckle born out of desperation and not because I found this situation amusing. I found it terrifying and began to pray.

“God, if you really exist, then I need help. I’m at a point of no return. This is what I’ve been seeking all my life and now I’m having second thoughts. If you love me like everyone says, then help me. Make this fear and doubt go away.

“I’ve only prayed to You one time before and I will admit it got answered. Now, I’m beginning to wonder if that was only coincidence. Here’s Your chance to prove to me that You are out there and that You really exist.”

I stood there for several minutes waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what I was expecting, perhaps it was manna from Heaven or the clouds parting or even the voice of an angel talking to me. I didn’t know what to expect, but I know what I got; nothing.

I sat there for several minutes and nothing happened. I silently pleaded for His help and nothing happened. Well, almost nothing happened, I began to get angrier and angrier, but other than that, nothing happened.

After several minutes, I gave up on my prayer. “Figures,” I mumbled as I picked up my letter. I was trembling so badly I had difficulty reading the letter. Since I couldn’t stop shaking long enough to focus on the letter, I spread the paper out on the desk in front on me and began reading.

I hope you’re sitting down because this next part is going to knock you off your feet. Eight weeks after this incident your mother announced to me that she was pregnant. I’m sure, by now, you’ve figured out that you were the child she was carrying.

I, on the other hand, saw this as a miracle. I saw it as God’s hand being placed on you. I saw it as a reflection of His love for you. I saw it as a blessing not only for me and the rest of the family, but for the world as well. I saw it as a sign that God was going to use you to do great things. That’s why I eventually surrendered my life to God. I want to be in Heaven with you. I wanted to be more than your father. I wanted to be your brother as well. I love you that much!

The next few lines had all been scratched out and I could see several places where my father had tried to begin a new sentence or paragraph, but each time he had marked through them and tried to begin anew. I could make out some of the words, but with none of them could I make out a full sentence.

I didn’t need to make them out, because I knew what they were going to say. Suddenly, all the questions I’d ever had were being answered and answered by me or, maybe even, God. Perhaps, this was an answer to a prayer, but I couldn’t see how.

My prayer had been for the removal of pain and for the healing of the rift between my mother and me, but this was definitely not what I was wanting. I wanted peace of mind and to have a soothing ointment applied to all the psychological wounds I had accumulated over forty years of living. What I got was a spiritual sucker punch right to the gut.

If ever I needed evidence to prove that God hated me, I now had it in spades. He knew the hurt that I had been nursing since conception and the hopes I had for them. What did He do about it? He ripped it wide open and allowed me to see all the poison that had been festering for decades. I hated Him for that.

I now understood everything. I now understood why I’d always been treated like a second class citizen by my own family. It was because I was not really a part of that family. I was nothing but a nuisance that they had to tolerate due to the unfortunate circumstances of my birth.

I started to laugh at the irony of it all. My hair, eyes, demeanor, body style and height was not the result of an odd genetic misfire, but the actual passing of the dominant genetic code that had been hardwired by God, Himself, into the Kane family.

I began to violently shake as the full impact of what I was now learning hit me. I began to curse my father for being a coward. I found it ironic that he could only tell me this after his death and not while he was still living. Did he fear my reaction that much?

And my mother, she was no better. For the first time in my life, I understood why she treated me the way she did. I now knew why I was the family curse. I stood as a constant reminder of the shame and humiliation she had endured. For nearly four and a half decades, I stood as a shining beacon to hearken her back to the most devastating day of her life.

Somewhere in the mist of all this turmoil taking place in my mind, something snapped. I began to laugh uncontrollably and started foaming at the mouth. I ripped the shirt off my back and began clawing at myself. I dug deep grooves into my arms and chest and watched with and animal like delight as the blood trickled down my body and began to drop onto the tan carpet below.

For some unknown reason, I began howling like a wolf. Grabbing a stack of papers, I began gnawing on them like a rat nibbling on a piece of cheese. I then stripped off all my clothes and began snake crawling on my belly.

At that instant something that is beyond description happened. It was as if I had split into two parts; the body and the spirit. The spirit inside me simply stepped outside of the body and left nothing but some animalistic being writhing on the floor. I could look down on myself and see my naked body slithering across the room, but was powerless to stop what was happening.

I could see the blood being smeared on the carpet and I remember thinking clear and coherent thoughts, but only one stayed with me. “She’s going to kill me for messing up the carpet.” Why I remember that and nothing else is beyond me, but that is all I remember.

I stood there watching and knowing that this creature on the floor was some doppelganger or specter that looked like me, but possessed none of my awareness. I remember feeling sorry for it and I recall being thankful that wasn’t the real me.

I watched myself and refused to re-enter the body until my wife burst through the door. I don’t know why I chose that exact moment to return to the prison that was my spirit’s shell casing, but I did. I didn’t want too. There was something liberating and wonderful about that experience outside my human shell. I had felt at peace with myself when I was outside the body and at no point wanted to go back. I returned only because I was afraid my wife would see the two parts of me and I wouldn’t be able to explain it to her.

Once back inside the body, I realized my mistake and tried to leave again, but was trapped. I let out a guttural scream and suddenly, my senses returned to me and I was the man I had been less than an ten minutes ago.

“What happened?” screamed my wife.

I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know myself.

I was still lying on the floor when my son entered the room. “Is that blood?” he asked. “Is daddy going to die?” He began shaking uncontrollably.

“No,” replied my wife. “He’s hurt, but not going to die. We need to get him up and get some clothes on him. Do you understand?”

Although the tears were still flowing from him like water rushing down a mountainside, he answered his mother. “Yes, what’s the matter with daddy? Why’s he naked? Is he sick?”

“Yes, but his sickness is in his mind. Now, help momma with daddy.”

They bent over and tried to pick me up, but once they laid their hands on me, I stood up on my own accord. I could see them and knew they were trying to help, but was unable to understand what they were trying to do. Everything was playing like a movie being shown within the recesses of my mind. I could see everything, but was helpless to react to it.

My wife put her arms around me and began to lead me towards the master bathroom. “Come on baby, we’re going to get you in the bathtub. Kieran, go turned the water on for momma.”

“I might get it too hot.”

“That’s all right I’ll check it once I’m in there. Go ahead, your daddy needs you.”

“Is he going to be all right?” There was caution and fear in my son’s voice.

“Something got inside his mind and grabbed a hold of his good sense. He’ll be okay once he comes to grip with it. A warm bath will do him a world of good.”

“How did he cut himself like that?”

“He didn’t. It was the sickness.”

Kieran began to cry out loud. Prior to this, the tears had been falling, but he’d remained silent; now, he was sobbing as though his heart had been ripped out of his chest.

While supporting me with one hand, his mother reached out with the other one and began to wipe his tears away. “There, there, it’s going to be okay. Daddy just needs some rest.”

“What if that disease is catchy? I don’t want you to get it too?”

“You won’t,” assured his mother. “I promise.”

The sobs stopped as if on cue. “Promise?” He tried in vain to smile.

“With all my heart, I do. Now go turn on the water.

Twenty minutes later, my wife was wiping my face with a warm wash cloth when I put my hand on her face and began rubbing it. “Where am I?” I asked. “What am I doing in the tub?”

“It’s a long story,” replied my wife.

“Daddy, you’re back!” shouted my son. “Where’d you go, dad?’ Where’d you go?” He started to hug me, but pulled back, hesitated, and then backed up a couple of steps.

He looked at me expectantly before he spoke. “Is it you dada? Is it really you?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “It’s me.”

My wife dropped the wash rag into the tub and lowered her head. I sat there watching as her shoulders began to bob up and down. She began to cradle her face in her hands.

I had to fight to choke down the lump that had formed in my throat. I began to stroke her dark hair and tried to whisper soothing words to her.

“Let it out,” I said as I caressed her. “I’m sorry for what happened. I didn’t mean it.”

Kieran saw what was happening and began stroking her hair as well. He moved in closer, but I noticed that he went to the other side of her. It was like he was using her body as a shield between the two of us.

“It’s all right momma. The bug has left dad. I don’t think it’s still floating around here. There’s nothing to worry about. If I see that bug, I’ll shoot it with a bazooka.”

I began to laugh at that and for the briefest of seconds, I could feel my wife’s body pause and then relax. I smiled even though she would tense up a few seconds later.

Kieran smiled when he realized that his words had brought relief to the family. I guess he thought that were he to make us laugh, then this whole scene would go away, because he tried and failed to make another joke.

“After I shoot it with a bazooka, I’ll flush it down the commode.”

He began to cackle, but it was a hard fake laugh and not the type that naturally flowed from my son.

I must have realized what he was doing because I began to laugh. At first it was forced and painful, but it did the trick. As I began to laugh, my son’s fake laugh turned to the genuine article. Once I saw this, mine followed suit. Within seconds, all three of us were laughing like a bunch of lunatics.

“Let’s get you out of the tub and get some band-aids on you,” stated my wife in a low motherly voice.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You’ve ripped your flesh off, but none of them are deep. A couple’ll leave scars, but most won’t. You’re lucky. It could have been worse.”

She looked me in the eye before she spoke again. “Honey, if that letter is going to cause you this much grief, you need to throw it away. Nothing is worth this.”

“It’s too late,” I responded. “I already know the truth.”

“And?”

“I’m not sure, but I now know why I always felt like an outsider in my own family. It’s because I am.”

I heard my wife gasp. “You mean you were adopted like you thought?”

“Worse.”

“What could be worse than that? Wait don’t answer that. Let’s give it a couple of hours.”

The last few miles to the house were a blur for me. I began to think about the funeral and tears started to stream from my eyes. They were not the kind that accompanies sobs and moans; rather they were the slow meandering type that bleeds from a broken heart.

During the funeral and wake, I was given the honor of being seated with the family. I was seated as the third child between Tim and Ray. I was also one of the six paw bearers, which also included her four sons and baby brother. Why I had been afforded such an honor was beyond me. I knew that she had treated me as one of her own, but I never knew that her love for me was that strong.

When I think about her, I realize how fortunate I have been to have such a wonderful mother, and truly, she was my mother even if it was only in my heart. I also suspect that it was in her heart as well.

My tears were flowing not because I missed her. They were flowing because I was jealous of her. She had a peace about her that I craved but had never been able to achieve. I wondered that were my confidence in my eternal future as secure as hers were, then, maybe, just maybe, I’d have the peace that she so richly displayed.

I admired the fact that she died convinced beyond all doubts that she’d live again. She fully expected to be raised from the dead and to be with God, Jesus, and all those apostles forever. I was amazed that someone could have that much faith. I once asked her how she could hold on to her beliefs during hard times.

“Faith comes by hearing and by the hearing of the Word of God,” was her response. “That is why I read my Bible, go to mass and am constantly in contact with my priest. There has not been a single week in my life since the age of twenty-one that I have not gone to confessional. If you keep in touch with God, He’ll see you through any and all problems.”

I remember that my lame response to that was, “From you lips to the ears of God.” It had been my way of trying to blow her off without being cruel.

As the garage door inched its way up the runners to which it was attached, I took a deep breath and wiped the tears from my face. I deliberately took my time as I fought tried to regain my composure. Once of the methods of delay was to go back to the rear hatch on my Jeep and began shuffling through my bags.

A light breeze with a mist was blowing so I turned my face to it hoping that the coldness of that wind would distort my face enough so that my wife and child wouldn’t notice that I had been crying.

I stood there for a few minutes staring into nothingness and hoping the cold wind would numb my soul. As those tiny vapors pelted me, I took in a deep cleansing breath. As the cool air rushed down my throat and into my system, I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I thought about three of the funniest things I’d ever seen my child do and began to smile. I did it a second time just to ensure that the look of sadness had left my visage.

Once I was convinced that I had beaten my doldrums, I grabbed my bags, closed the door to the vehicle, walked into the garage and clicked the remote to lock the door.

As I made my way to the side door, I hear it unlock. It swung open and there was Kieran in his dinosaur pajamas standing in the middle of the foyer.

“Momma, dads home,” he bellowed as he jumped into my arms.

I pulled him into me and hug him for all I was worth. The instant we embraced I looked to my left and saw my wife coming down the hall. She wrapped her arms and the both of us.

“Group hug,” whispered my child as the three of us embraced.

“I missed you. Did you bring me anything?” His words we so low and fast I almost missed them.

“Maybe,” I said and then pulled him into me. The instant he began to squeeze me I looked at my wife and raised my eyebrows as if begging her for help.

She smile and mouthed the words, “In your closet.”

I raised my eyes again.

“In a large paper bag,” she mouthed.

I winked at her and whispered, “I love you.”

She smiled and winked at me.

I let go of our embrace and cupped my son’s face in my hand. “I’ll make you a deal. If you let me unpack, I believe I might find a toy…”

“Army tank!” he shouted.

I looked at my wife and she winked a second time and began to laugh.

“Of course, it’s an army tank,” I said. “What did you think it would be?”

“A gorilla or something like that.”

“Nope, I know my boy likes army tanks and dinosaurs.”

“Do I get a dinosaur too?”

I looked at my wife and she shook her head to indicate that we didn’t have any dinosaurs. “Nah, just an army tank.”

“That’s okay; I like World War II stuff too.”

“Let’s get out of here and let daddy unpack,” said my wife as she took him by the shoulders and began leading him to the living room.

“Do we have too?” he asked. “I want to see my army tank.”

“I’ll bring it out,” I responded. “Just as soon as I dig it out.”

“I won’t be crushed, will it?

I could see the look of concern in his eyes. They were as big as saucers. “Nah, it’ll be fine.”

He and his mother turned and made their way back to the living room. As they were walking down the hall my wife said, “Don’t forget to put those bags in the back of the closet.”

“I won’t and thanks.”

She turned and shot me naughty grin and a wink.

Three minutes later, I was walking in the living room holding a box containing a plastic one thirty-second scale World War II, German Panzer tank and its crew of two.

“How do you like this?” I asked as I handed it to my son.

His eyes began to shine and the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen lit up his face. He shook his head in excitement as he grabbed the toy from me.

“Wow, I don’t have this one. It’s a German tank.” He pointed to a symbol on the tank to illustrate his point. “That makes me five German tanks but only four American or British. I’ll need another on of them.”

“Whoa, you’d better slowdown. You haven’t even begun to play with this one and you’re already demanding another.”

I began to laugh and my wife joined in, but he looked at us stone faced.

“The Germans will win if they have the most tanks. I want our side to win.”

“We did,” I responded. “Give it back to me and I’ll open it for you.”

He obliged. It took me about fifteen minutes to open it. Between the seemingly endless number of twist ties they used to secure the toy to its box and his continuous banter about how long it was going to take to open, I thought I was never going to finish.

It took some effort, but I finally got the toy out of the box in which it came. I also removed the two soldiers that accompanied the tank. I put the officer in the hatch at the top of the vehicle and I put the drive in another opening. Once I was satisfied with what I had done, I gave it to my son.

He took it and grabbed me by the hand. “Let’s go up stairs and put this one on the table. You can help me.”

I looked at my wife and she nodded her approval as our son began to drag me up the stairs and towards his room.

When we got there, I noticed the four foot by three foot Thomas The Tank Engine table that pretty much took up half of the open space in his room. Sitting on the table was a battle scene that had been organized and set up by my child. On the table were several tanks, some bunkers and at least eighty hand painted soldiers with each being about three inches in height. The first thing that I noticed was that the British and American troops outnumbered the Germans at a clip of about three to one.

Kieran began clearing out a place for the new tank. Once he’d put it on the table, he looked at me and asked, “Do you think this tank’ll make the Germans too tough for us?”

I smiled and rubbed his head. “Nah, we outnumber them about three to one. I think we’ll be all right, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’ll need another American tank to know for sure.”

“Oh, is that how it is? You’re not happy with the one you got?”

“Yes, but we need another good guy one to make it even.”

“If you do well in school this week, I’ll get you another one.”

“Promise?”

“Yep.”

He wrapped his arms around my mid-section. Once he let go, he grabbed my hand and began pulling on it. “Play dad? I want to play army.”

“Just for a little while. I need to unpack and call work.”

“Momma,” he shouted. “Would you unpack for dad? He’s playing with me.”

“Okay returned my wife. Randy, are you boys hungry?”

“Nope,” replied my son. “We’re playing.”

I began to laugh as I heard my wife’s response. “Whatever.”

We spent the next hour or so fighting several pretend battles. In each, I had to be the Axis while my son was the Allies. Thanks to his overwhelming numbers and constant arguing over the loss of his soldiers, he was able to go undefeated on this day. As we were setting up for our sixth or seventh battle, my wife called to me. “Randy, the mail is here and there’s a large yellow envelope from your Uncle Donnie…”

“What did you say?” I interrupted.

“There’s a letter from your uncle.”

I jumped up without saying a word to my son and I ran through the hall and down the stairs and stopped at the foyer. My wife was closing and locking the door behind her when I arrived.

“Can I have the letter from Donnie?”

“What is it?”

“Answers, I hope. At least, that’s what he said it held.”

“Answers, are you sure?”

She handed the envelope toward me and I snatched it greedily.

I could see the surprise in her eyes when I grabbed it. “What’s so important about this letter?”

“Hopefully, it will contain the answer to the questions I’ve had all my life. Hopefully, it will tell me why I’ve been the outcast and freak in my family. Maybe it’ll tell me why my own mother hates me so.”

I inserted my finger into the top of the envelope and began rocking it back and forth across the package. Within seconds, the letter was open. I took a deep breath and hesitated. “What if this is not what you were expecting,” I thought to myself. “What if this doesn’t supply the answers you’ve been looking for the past forty years? Once you read it, you can never put this knowledge away. Is it worth it?”

I put my hand into the envelope and began feeling around. I don’t know what I was looking for, perhaps a key or something like that. Something within me told me that there was a vault somewhere and it contained all the secrets to my life. That had been the same fantasy I have been carrying around with me since childhood. I thought I had gotten rid of that bit of childishness, but apparently, I hadn’t.

All I found was a stack of paper that had been stapled together. I clutched it and slowly pulled it from the envelope. I gave a small gasp when I saw the top of the papers break the surface of the package. Once the stack was about half an inch out of the covering, I stopped and began to look at it. I could tell by the light blue line on the left-hand side of the top sheet that this was notebook paper.

I stopped and took a deep breath and began debating whether I should go any farther. Part of me was saying that there were secrets that were best left unknown, but there was another part of me that was being eaten alive by the curiosity of it all. That part of me won and with a swift jerk, I yanked the stack from the cocoon in which it had been sleeping.

I pulled it out face down. I twisted my hand so that the first page was now facing me. The top of the first hand written was printed in large letters and it read, “To My Beloved Son.” The letter, which was written in cursive, didn’t begin until about half way down the page.

I looked at my wife and said, “I need to read this alone. Do you mind if I take it into my office and read it?”

“No,” she responded as she reached out and pulled me into her. She wrapped her arms around me and quickly let me go. “Randy, you’re trembling. What in the world does that letter contain?”

“Hopefully, the answers to all my questions.”

“You mean the reasons you and your mother don’t get along.”

I crossed my fingers and raised them up so that she could see them. “Hopefully. Do you mind?”

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

“No, but I have to know why I’ve been treated like an outcast by my own parents.”

“Very well, I won’t stop you. I hope it gives you the peace of mind you’re seeking, but I’m afraid it’s only going to create more problems for you.”

“Me to, but the truth has to come out. I need some type of closure.”

She tried to smile, “You have Kieran and me and the baby and you always will have.”

“I know and I’m grateful for that, but I have to read this. I’ve been wondering about this all my life and am not about to let it go. Who knows, maybe my childhood fantasy of being a prince of some foreign land who was sent away for his own protection may be true?”

We both laughed nervously at that. I then kissed her and made my way to my office. Once there I sat down at the desk. I couldn’t stop trembling for several seconds and thus was unable to read the letter.

“Get a grip,” I whispered as I was forced to lay the letter on the desk in order to read it due to my uncontrollable shaking. I took a deep breath and began reading.

To My Beloved Son:

If you are reading this, then I have passed onto my reward or damnation depending on God and His mercies. I have asked Donnie to pass this on to you should I not make it. He’s the only one I can trust because he has kept my secret for over forty years and I believe he’ll take it to the grave with him.

We went out the next weekend. From our first date, she told me that she had been married at the age of sixteen and had a child by that marriage. Her husband had abandoned her so she divorced him. It made no difference to me. I loved her and loved your sister as well. With in a year, we were married. My grandfather was the man who married us.

I stopped reading for a second and tried scanning through the papers. I was having difficulty finding what I was looking for because my dad’s penmanship was almost as poor as mine. He had written on both sides of the paper. I scanned each of the front sides and then flipped it over and tried scanning the back sides but had no luck. I repeated this sequence a second time and then a third. Once I realized I wasn’t going to find it that way, I began reading again.

I had gotten about half way through the sixth page when I heard a knock tapping against my door. I started to say something but the door opened and in walked my son carrying a few of boxes of games. I couldn’t tell what the other ones were, but the box on top read, “Sorry.”

“Dad,” said Kieran as he entered the room. “Need you.”

I smiled “need you” was what he said any time he wanted something. It could be a drink of water and chocolate chip cookie or someone to tell him a story what time he sat on the potty. “Need you” was his catch all phrase to get your attention.

Although, it could some times be a small nuisance because his questions seemed endless, I loved it when he called for me. It made me feel loved, needed and important to my child when he called. He was such an inquisitive boy. I loved it when he’d ask questions, which seemed to be to be all the time. I’d answer all that I could. Any that I couldn’t, I’d help him look up on the Internet.

I was just as full of questions at his age. The only difference is that I’m perfectly willing to stop and talk to him and hopefully answer his questions. Depending on their mood, my parents would either answer them for you or send you away from them with a scold that made you feel as though you’d been put on this earth to do nothing more than aggravate them. On several occasions, my mother would whip me for asking such questions. Once she hit me with a broomstick when she said I was trying to make her look stupid, when all I asked was how bats flew.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Let’s play games.”

“Dad’s kinda busy right now, can we play later.”

“No, you said yesterday that come today we’d play and it’s today, so play.”

“Can’t I have about half an hour to finish what I’m doing?”

“You doing somebody’s taxes?”

“No, I’m reading something grandpa wrote me.”

“You can read that any time, now play.”

“Can’t I have just five minutes?”

There must have been an edge to my voice even though I hadn’t noticed it. He winced when I spoke and I noticed some of the glimmer went out of his eyes. He started to turn and leave, but I called after him.

“Kieran, if you want me to, I’ll play.”

A smile shot across his face and his eyes brightened. “Let’s go in the kitchen so momma can play too.” When he spoke, his voice not loud enough to be a shout, but it came awfully close.

“What games have you got there?” I inquired as I laid the letter down and reluctantly followed him.

I’ve known many people in this world that claimed to have had a rough childhood so I don’t hold myself out as being unusual, but I am different. The fact that I never felt loved or protected as a kid, made me all the more determined that my child was going to get those qualities from me.

If I was sad or depressed as child, I was called a whiner and was told to “suck it up and forget about it.” I, on the other hand, take a different approach. Whenever my child has had a bad week, we throw him a party. I create banners and flags. We throw a “Kieran Appreciation Day.” We take him out to his favorite restaurant and make the biggest fuss over him. We do all we can to cheer him up.

I don’t want him to be like his dad. I don’t want him to internalize all things. I don’t want him to feel so unloved that he nearly has a nervous breakdown at the age of nineteen. In this world, he’s going to have enough gunk to deal with, there’s no use in me adding any more to that.

As we sat down at the table, I looked at Kieran and gave him a mocking critical look. “You’re not going to try and cheat today are you?” I asked.

“I don’t have to cheat,” he responded.

“But you do anyway,” I said and then grinned at him.

“I’ll try not to it this time.” He tried to keep from laughing, but failed.

“Oh brother,” I heard his mother say and I nodded my head in agreement.

“Randy, what are you doing calling at this time of the day?” he asked

“Listen, I need you to drop what you’re doing and go check on mom.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, I just got of the phone with mom and was expecting her to pitch a fit. When she didn’t, I began to worry about her. I just wanted to know that she’s okay. I’ve tried calling her back, but she must’ve the phone off the hook because I get a busy signal.”

“So, you want me to check on her to make sure she’s all right?” he asked.

“Yep, would you?”

“I can’t, but I’ll send Tanner down to check on her.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“What happened between you two?”

“I don’t know. You know how she is. One minute she’s happy as a clam and the next she’s spitting like a cobra.”

“That’s our mother. Hold on what time I call the boys.”

A couple of minutes later he was back on the phone.

“I sent Tanner and Eddie down to check on her. It’ll take a couple of minutes. You can stay on the line or I can call you back when they get here, which ever works best for you.”

“I’ll hang up and you can call me back in a couple of minutes. Thanks bubby.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I know.”

It was over and hour before he called back. I picked the receiver up before the second tone rang. When I picked up the phone, I expected bad news, but was shocked by what I heard.

“Randy, that you?” came Alex’s voice through my earpiece.

“What took so long? I was beginning to get worried. I called you once, but it was busy.”

“I’ve been on the phone with mom.”

“She all right?”

“Yell, but I’ve got some bad news.”

My hand began to shake and I took a deep breath before I spoke. I had been expecting something like this, but was still shocked when it came. “Go on and tell me what it is.”

“It’s Jessi.”

“Sullivan?”

“She’s,” he paused and I could hear him sucking in air, “had a heart attack and it don’t look too good for her.”

“What? You’re kiddin’. I just spoke to her at the funeral.”

“Franklin just called mom looking for you. He said that Tim was on the road and they left messages at his hotel room and on his cell phone. They called mom because he couldn’t find your number.”

“How’s Jessi?”

“Bad, I reckon. Mom wants me to take her to see her. They’ve got her in Pikeville. She’s in good hands, but that don’t mean a lot.

“Franklin said she’s been asking about you. You going to go see her?”

“I’ve got to. Has the roads gotten any better?”

“Yeah, you know how it is here. You get three feet of snow on Monday and it has melted off by Wednesday. The roads are good as far as I know.”

“They’d better be. I’m coming home come Hell or high water.”

“She’s on the tenth floor over there. She’s in ICU. Veronica works on the O-B-G-Y-N floor and she knows more about it than I do.”

“I’ll call her. Thanks Alex.”

“I know what she means to you.”

I hung up the phone and collapsed onto the chair in the room. I buried my face into my hands and began to sob. As the tears flowed from me, my body began to shake as I fought to make sense out of life. I lowered my head and silently began to pray.

“God, what are you doing? How much more are you going to put on me? First my dad, then my mom and now this; what’s next? I can’t take this. I thought You were supposed to be a loving and tender God. Is this what You call being kind and loving. It sure doesn’t look that way to me.

“What have I done that has made You so angry with me? What sin have I committed that is so heinous that you personally have to destroy everything I love just so You can get Your jollies? How am I supposed to believe in a God that allows so much pain to be inflicted upon someone that doesn’t deserve it? If this is what You call being just, is it any wonder that billions of people don’t love You?”

I sat there over the next few minutes trying to understand why my world was caving in upon me. In the last week, I had lost my father, alienated my mother and was possibly on the verge of losing the only real mother figure I’d ever had.

As I sat there lost in self-pity, Jennifer opened the door. As she entered the room, I looked up and she could see the sorrow on my face.

“Is everything all right? Is your mother sick?”

“Jessi had a heart attack?”

“Jessi, Tim’s mom, Jessica?”

I nodded my head.

“Is she all right.”

I shrugged my shoulders, but still didn’t speak.

“Where is she at?”

I looked into my wife’s deep brown eyes and began to cry. She walked over, put her left hand on my head and began to caress me with her right.

“There, there,” she said. “God’ll take care of her.”

“God,” I spat. “He’ll take care of her by killing her.”

“If that is His will, then who are we to question…”

“His will! His will has done enough if you ask me! If He’s a God of love then bring on the god of hate, I say.”

“Don’t talk like that!”

“I’ll talk like I damn well please! If God is so good and loving, He’s yet to prove it to me. I believe He’s a vengeful and hateful god. I don’t believe He has my best interest in mind.”

“Romans 8:28, says, ‘For all things work to the good of those who love the Lord and are called for His purposes.’”

“Whyyyy, of course it does. It also says, ‘Vengeance is mine.’ So, which one is He, a god of love or a god of vengeance?”

“I like to see him as a God of love,” she said.

“And I know Him to be a god of vengeance.”

We didn’t speak a word for the next few minutes. I sat there in my chair and wrapped my arms around my wife’s waist. She ran her fingers through my hair with one hand and gently rubbed me on the back with the other.

A few minutes later, Kieran entered the room. He was holding a juice box in each hand.

“Dad, I need you.”

“Daddy’s kinda sad at the moment,” replied my wife.

“But I need him. We’re going to play sharkaroonie. I can’t play it by myself. The Great White needs the Bull Shark to help chase off the bad guy fishes. Besides, I got us both a juice and some animal crackers.”

“I’ll be right up,” I said as I hid my face in my wife’s belly.

“Are you listening for the baby?” asked my son. “Can I listen to momma’s belly too?”

“No,” replied my wife.

I looked up at my wife and tried to smile. “Let him, please.”

“Please momma,” parroted Kieran.

“All right, but just for a minute.”

He cautiously approached his mother. As he neared her, I cupped his chin in my hand. “Look at me,” I said. He hesitated as he usually does when he thinks he’s in trouble, but he finally looked at me.

“Kieran, I want you to know that I am so proud to be your dad. I want to thank you for picking momma and me as your parents. When God made you, he said that you could have any parents in the world and you chose us. That makes me feel awfully special.”

His eyes beamed at me. “You are special and so is momma.”

As I pulled him close to me, he shouted, “Group hug,” and we all three embraced each other for a few seconds.

I held on a bit longer than I should have but I couldn’t let them go. They were the only things in this world that I truly loved. Without them, I had no reason to exist. I fought to hide my tears from them and held on just a little longer hoping that the additional time would give me the opportunity to compose myself.

As I let go and we began to separate from each other, my wife whispered, “Told you He was a God of love.”

I looked at my son and winked at him. “Go on up to your room and I’ll be up there in a minute.”

“Can we play sharkaroonie?”

“Yep.”

He raised his hand and shouted, “I get to be the Great White.”

I followed his lead. “I get to be the Bull Shark.”

He looked at his mother and asked, “Do you want to play? You can be the Short-Finned Mako.”

“No, thanks,” replied Jennifer. “I’ll be packing daddy some clothes what time you two are playing.”

Kieran turned and without saying another word, he ran out the room, through the hall and up the flight of stairs.

“Aren’t you two going?” I asked.

“No, somebody needs to stay here.”

“What if something happens to the baby?”

“Autie and Brett are just down the street. I’ll have them to check in on me.”

“What if they’re gone when something happens?”

“God will take care of us.”

“I’ve seen how He handles things and quiet frankly, that bothers me even more than the thought of you being alone.”

“We’ll be fine. Now go up and play with your son. You’ve got to get on the road or you’ll never get there before dark.”

I stood up, snapped to attention, saluted and shouted, “Aye, Aye captain.” I tried to smile at my own attempt at humor but failed. She kissed me and I hugged her just to let her know how much she meant to me.

I spent the next hour or so with my child. We played sharks and ate animal crackers. It amazes me the number of ways my son can invent in order to win. He’ll change rules on you, declares your moves totally illegal and then two minutes later will try to do the exact same thing. On more than one occasion that afternoon, I had to call him down for cheating. Of course, he denied every one of them, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to bamboozle me.

Somewhere during our tenth or eleventh game, Jennifer called for me.

“Randy, I’ve got your stuff packed and have made you a couple of sandwiches for the road.”

“Be right down,” I answered. “I’m about to beat Kieran for the first time.

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” he said.

I looked at him, smiled, and then proceeded to roll a pair of fives with the game dice. When he saw that I had rolled a ten, he began to shout, “You cheated. You cheated!”

“No I didn’t. I beat you fair and square.”

He began to cry and demanded that I roll again. I refused. “He needs to lose every now and then,” I thought to myself. We usually let him win when we played with him, but I would occasionally beat him just so that he’d learn to be a gracious winner.

“I don’t want to play any more,” he said as he got up and left the room.

“I have to go away.”

As I entered the hallway, I noticed an over night case and a garment bag sitting on the floor next to the door that leads to the garage. My wife was standing next to them. She looked up as I approached. There were tears in her eyes even though she smiled at me.

“You be careful. Those roads may be tricky.”

“I’ll be fine. Besides, Eastern Kentucky has probably already melted off.”

“I’ve packed enough for four days. I wish you didn’t have to go.”

“That makes two of us. Still, she loves me like one of her own and I feel the same about her.”

“I know. I’d do the same. This weather has me worried. I know what Alex said, but I still worry about it. I’ve had a strange feeling all day.”

I’d been around my wife long enough to listen to her when she talked about those “witchy feelings” she has occasionally. She possesses a unique knack for predicting big events. It isn’t like a psychic that predicts major disasters. Hers works only on the people she loves. She starts by having either a good or a bad feeling about something, and then it gains more clarity. After that, she knows that a major event is about to take place and she also knows to whom it is going to happen. She usually calls them up and tells them how she feels and within three days to a week, her suspicions usually come true.

She definitely has a gift for this and that bothers her. She is a devoutly religious woman and thus believes that her “feelings” are unholy and are to be ignored, but on the other hand, she knows they are uncanny in their accuracy.

“Are you having a good feeling or bad feeling about it?” I asked.

“Both. I can’t explain it. But, I believe something bad is about to happen to you. And, I believe you are going to go through a terrible ordeal. But, I can’t help but to believe you’re going to come out of this a better man than you are now.”

“When is this” – I held up my hands and winked bunny ears with my fingers – “’ordeal’ supposed to start?”

“It already has. Please be careful.”

I was startled by her response, but I pretended not to be troubled by it. I waved her words off with a flick of my hand.

“I’ll be all right.” I said that more for myself than I did for her.

She stared at me and smiled. “I believe you will.”

With that, I winked at her and hugged both of them before I opened the door to the garage. I then picked up my bags and hit the overhead door switch.

“Bye, I love you,” I whispered as the door slowly ambled up the wall.

“Bye dada,” returned Kieran as he waved to me.

“Be careful baby, I want my husband back in one piece.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said as I made my way to my Jeep. I threw my bags in the back, turned on the vehicle, walked over, and kissed them a second time.

Without saying another word, I hopped in the Liberty and began to back out of the driveway. They followed to the door of the garage and waved to me. I tooted the horn and slowly made my way out of the subdivision.

The trip to Pikeville was long and uneventful. My brother was right about the snow. It seemed as though over half of it had disappeared since the day of the funeral. Even though it made for an easier drive, I wasn’t that happy about the situation because the beautiful white snow had been replaced by dirty brown, sloshing puddles of mud.

I arrived at the front desk of the hospital just before dark. A fashionably dressed elderly woman was setting at the help desk. As I approached, she smiled and asked, “May I help you?”

“I’m looking for a patient. Her name is Jessica Sullivan.”

“Sullivan, is it?”

“Yes ma’am. Jessica.”

As the woman began typing the name in the computer, I heard a voice down the corridor. “Randy, is that you?”

I looked to my right and noticed Tim coming directly towards me. I began to run towards him. As I neared him, he stopped and waited for me. I swept my arms around him and he followed suit. We embraced for just a second and then parted.

“How is she doing?” I asked.

“It’s bad.”

“What, you’re lying?”

“I wish I was.”

“How bad?”

“Real bad.”

“Is she going to make it?”

“Maybe, but even if she does, she ain’t got very long.”

I stopped and my knees nearly buckled under me. As I began to slip, Tim grabbed me and helped to steady me. Leading me to a chair, my friend held on until I was able to take a seat.

“You all right?” he asked.

“What happened?”

“You went pale and then began to stumble. I caught you and brought you here.”

“The last thing I remember was asking you how she was.”

“You’ll see. She’s been asking about you. She’s been worried that you wouldn’t make it in time.”

“In time, what the hell does that mean? In time?”

I looked at him and felt my insides wretch. I ran to a nearby garbage can and emptied the contents of my stomach into it.

“Pull your self together!” he snapped. “Mommy needs you and you’d better get a grip on things or…”

His voice trailed off at that point. I looked up and I could see the tears in his eyes. I watched as a single tear meandered its way down his cheek. He looked like a frightened little boy. Forgetting my own pain, I stood up and walked over to embrace him. At first, he resisted, but I refused to let go. After a few seconds of hesitation, he relented.

I could feel the tension in his back. He tried to put up a good front and he did manage to control his pain for a few seconds, but he eventually let go and began sobbing like a two year-old child. As his body began quaking, I held on even tighter.

“Let it out,” I whispered. “You can’t keep this bottled up in you like that. Let it out.”

We stood there locked in our embrace for several minutes without saying a word. Once his body quit trembling, he let go of his embrace and I did likewise. Looking in my eyes, he began to speak.

“I certainly chose well when I chose you as my best friend.”

“You mean brother, don’t you?”

He smiled at me. “That’s exactly what I mean. I chose you as my brother.”

I shook my head in agreement with him. He smiled a second time and motioned for me to follow him. Not wanting to spoil the moment, I remained silent and followed. We took the elevator up to the Cardiac Care Unit. When we got there, we turned left and entered the fourth room on our right.

As I entered the room, I heard Frankie say, “Good, I’m glad you made. Mommy’s been asking about you for the last hour.”

“I’m here now.”

“And not a moment too soon,” replied Frankie. He then slapped me on the shoulder and motioned for Tim to leave the room. He then looked at me. “She wants some time to be a lone with her babies and you’re the last one to get here.” My body convulsed from both the pain of the love associated with those words.

He then leaned in and whispered to me, “Can you handle this?”

I replied in kind. “I have to.”

He patted me on the shoulders and left the room.

“Hello,” croaked Jessi. Her voice sounded like she was calling from the inside of a cave.

“Hello, Jessi,” I squeaked like a tiny mouse.

“Is that you, Randy?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Get over here and let me have a look at you.”

I walked over to a chair sitting beside her bed. She reached out to me with both hands and I took them into mine. We embraced for a long minute and then she began to speak.

“Doctors say that I don’t have long to live. They say I won’t see another Christmas.”

“What do they know? Your heart may get even stronger after this.”

She tried to laugh but it came out a cackle.

“My heart ain’t the problem. I’m eat up with cancer. It comes from smoking nearly fifty year.”

“Cancer, but I thought you had a heart attack.”

“I did, but that’s not what’s killing me. I’ve had cancer for some time now.”

She must have seen the shock on my face because she began answering questions I hadn’t even asked.

“I’ve been battling this for a while. The only person who knew about it was my brother Kenny. I swore him to secrecy. We’ve been hiding it from you kids because we didn’t want you to worry.”

“Don’t you think we had a right to know?” I exploded. I hadn’t meant to shout at her but I did. The shock of hearing her telling me that she was dying was too much for me to handle at this time.

“How could you do this?” I shouted.

Before I could say another word, she waved her hand to stop me. “I didn’t want to be treated any differently. I’ve seen how people get treated when they’re dying. They’re treated like they’re helpless and I don’t want to be treated like that.”

She flashed me an iron smile. “The odd thing about it was as skinny as I am, I didn’t have to worry about rapid weight loss and nobody noticed I was sick until this happened.”

I thought about saying something, but for the life of me couldn’t come up with the words to express how I felt. I stood there knitting my eyebrows trying to think of some nugget of wisdom but was interrupted by her laughter.

I looked at her and she was trying to laugh through a hacking cough. I could hear death choking the life out of her with each of those hollow gags.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen you speechless,” she said during one of the brief periods she had between coughs. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted.”

The hacking cough began anew and I waited for her to catch her breath before I spoke. “Both,” I said. “You should be both.”

She laughed again and I saw some of the old Jessica come into her eyes. I reached out and began to rub my hand over her face. After about the third or fourth stroke, she grasped my hand in hers, pulled to her lips, and kissed it.

“When I die…”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Baby, it’s going to happen whether we like it or not. God’s got His own way of doing things and He’s not taking orders from me.”

“God,” I snapped. “What’s He got to do with this?”

“Everything. He made me and I guess He’s ready to call me home.”

“Why you? Why not someone who deserves it?”

“Don’t you think I deserve it?”

I could hear the honesty in her voice. I trembled as I thought about it. No, she didn’t deserve this. If ever there was a good and true woman, I was looking at her. What good did that do her? She was barely sixty-five and God was willing to snuff her out like a candle flame burning against a strong wind.

“No, you don’t deserve it.”

“I’ve sinned and am deserving of this. We’ve all sinned, even you.”

I shot her blank look and she smiled. “Even you,” she repeated.

“I find your sin hard to believe.”

“I’ve committed more than my share of sins, but they’ve been forgiven. Of that, I’m one hundred percent sure.”

“I wish I could be sure.”

“It’s easy. Trust in God and He’ll do the rest.”

“But, I don’t trust Him. He’s been nothing but a nuisance in my life. All He wants to do is to interfere where He’s not wanted and to hurt those that don’t deserve it.”

“I’m going to a better place. You’re not going to begrudge me my reward are you?”

Unsure of how to answer, I remained silent. She took my silence as an answer to the affirmative.

“I don’t know why you don’t believe in God, but I know He loves you…”

“Loves me?” I began to laugh but it was one born of frustration and not mirth. “Is that why He allowed me to be treated like a dog by my own family? Is that why I feel as though I don’t belong to the very people that are supposed to love me? Is that why He allows my own mother to hate me?”

“She doesn’t hate you. She just…” Her voice trailed off and she began to cough and shake violently. The spasm only lasted a few seconds.

“You all right?”

She nodded her head to indicate that she was. After a couple more hacks, she began to speak.

“You were loved. I loved you like my very own. I made not a speck of difference between you and my own.”

“I know that and I love you as well. You were the mother I always wanted.”

“And you think God had nothing to do with that? You’re loved and loved dearly. You were lucky. You had two mothers.”

“That were polar opposites.”

“And look how you turned out. You’re the child every mother dreams about.”

“What a guy so screwed up in the head he actually contemplates chucking everything and just ending it all?”

“No, the son that over came incredible odds to make something of himself. You don’t know how special you really are. I wish that you could see that God has great plans for you.”

“God? Plans? I’d laugh if anyone else said that to me!”

“Why not me?”

“Because, I love you more than life itself. I wish I could be like you and believe, but I can’t.”

“Why the doubt? Why the anger?”

I shrugged. “I wish I knew. If only He could prove Himself to me, you know, where I couldn’t doubt it; where it couldn’t be explained away?”

“You’ve never had a prayer answered?”

“Once, but I believe that it was only a coincidence.”

“No such thing. That was God, but you refused to listen.”

“If He proves to me He’s real, I’ll follow.”

“I’ll pray for you and I know He’ll answer it. He’s got a plan for you. I just know it.”

I started to say something, but she put her finger to her lips in order to silence me.

“Don’t spoil it,” she whispered as she gently pulled me into a hug.

I sat there with her for the next hour or so. I was still holding her hand when a nurse entered the room to check on her.

“How are we doing?” asked the nurse.

“I’m ready,” returned Jessica. “The Lord can take me any time He pleases.”

The nurse looked at me and smiled politely. “Can we have a few minutes alone?”

Embarrassed, I smiled and said, “Forgive me. Yes, you may.”

As I exited the room, Jessica called to me. “Randy, I look forward to seeing you in Heaven. God wants you to know that He loves you and that you belong to Him even if you don’t realize it. I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said as I pulled the door behind me.

She died before I got to speak with her again. Her death hurt worst than my own father’s because with her, I had lost the best part of who I am.

What had I done to deserve such treatment? I had said nothing to her and couldn’t for the life of me figure out her sudden change in attitude. The fact that she would allow my family to get out in weather like that frightened me. To me, it spoke volumes. What could possibly be more important to her than the lives of my family?

My body began to quiver uncontrollably as it hit me. There was something my mother was hiding and it was so terrible that she was willing to risk the lives of my family to keep it hidden. At that thought, chills raced up my back like the icy hand of death touching my soul.

Over the next thirty minutes, I began to rack my mind as I tried to come up with the answer to the question I was convinced needed to be answered. I thought of every incident that I could bring to mind. Some where locked within my head a clue to the secret was there. I just had to find it.

I was still trying to figure things out when my wife and child came in from the cold.

“Dad,” called my son. “We’ve got the biggest snowman on the block.”

“We do? That’s nice.”

“Are you proud of me?” His face was engulfed by his smile.

“Always, why do you ask that?”

“You look sad.”

“I do?”

“Yes, you do,” interrupted my wife. “What’s going on Randy?”

I shrugged. “Still trying to make sense of everything.”

Jennifer puffed a loud burst of air. “One of these days I’m going to rip every hair in her head out. Mark my words, she and I are going to go around and around.”

“Jennifer!” I snapped shocked by the venom in her voice.

“I don’t care. No one has a right to treat their own child like she treats you.”

“She’s still my…”

“God forgive her for that.”

“Quit fighting,” shouted Kieran. “I don’t want you to fight.”

Jennifer gently wrapped him in her arms and pulled him to her. “We’re not fighting sweetheart.”

“Then why are you yelling at each other?”

“We’re not,” I injected. “Momma is mad at someone and daddy is sad. Did it sound like we were fighting?”

“Yes, and it scared me.”

“We’re sorry,” input Jennifer. “We’re not fighting. I’m upset that someone has made daddy sad.”

“Did I do it?” he asked innocently.

“No,” I replied as I walked over and began to smother both of them with kisses.

“Then who made you sad? That’s not nice.”

“That’s right,” responded his mother.

As I went to hug them, it hit me. “Aunt Katherine,” I shouted as I snapped my fingers.

“Who?” asked Jennifer.

“Katherine,” I replied as it suddenly hit me. “She’s the answer I’m looking for.” I looked at my wife and said, “Please excuse me for a second, but I’ve got to make a call.”

“To your Aunt Katie?”

“Exactly, I think she’s the answer to my dilemma.”

I began to smile and my wife followed suit. My son seemed to be trying hard to figure out what was taking place. “What about Aunt Katie?” he asked.

“Are you sure?” questioned Jennifer.

“Only one way to find out.”

“Good, let’s put this nightmare to rest once and for all.”

“You mind?” I asked.

“Nope, I’m dying to know myself.”

I hugged the both of them and she began to usher Kieran out the door as I walked over to the telephone.

After three rings, someone answered on the other end.

“Hello,” came a female voice over the phone.

“Katie, is that you?” I asked not recognizing the voice

“No, this is Trisha. Is that you Randy?”

“Hey, Trisha. How’re you doing? Is your mom in?”

“Yep, when’s that baby due and do you know what it is?”

“It’s due in April and we believe it’s a girl. Gonna name her Emily Brooke.”

“If it’s a boy?”

“Lance Alexander.”

“Hold own and I’ll get mommy for you.”

A few seconds later, my aunt was on the phone.

“Hello Randy, how’s my favorite nephew? You know I thought about you the other day. I was baking some of my homemade banana nut bread when I looked at Trishie and said, ‘I wish Randy were here. That boy loves my baking.’”

“Not just me, but everybody. That’s why you’ve won over twenty baking contests over the years. You won the Jaycees bakeoff so many times they wound up making you a judge.”

I heard her laugh before she spoke. “You were born with a silver tongue in your mouth. You ought to be in politics, but you’re honest. I guess you’d be a terrible one at that.

“Why’d you call? You didn’t call to just to check upon your old aunt did ya?”

“You’re not old and you know it.”

“Told you, you’ve got a silver tongue.”

“I called for two reasons Aunt Katherine.”

“You called me Katherine. This must be serious. What is it baby? I’m listening.”

“The first reason is to check upon you.”

I knew I was lying and was hoping she didn’t but she soon shattered that illusion.

“That’s the reason you’ll never be a good politician, you can’t lie worth a lick. I know you’re concerned about me, but that’s not why you called. What’s the real reason for calling? Is it your dad?”

“I, huh, don’t know,” I said as I stumbled across my words.

“Take your time, we’ve got all day.”

Not knowing what else to do, I spurted out what was on my mind.

“What secret is my family keeping from me?”

I heard a gasp at the other end. It was followed by silence. I stood there in silence for over a minute. I was afraid to speak because I feared she’d speak and I’d be interrupting her and thus miss something. She uttered something that I could barely hear and then after an extra long pause that seemed like an eternity to me, she began to speak.

“Wh-wh-what gave you that idea?”

“It was only a hunch until just now. You’ve now confirmed my suspicions. Boy that would answer a lot of questions about my life.”

“I’m not the person you should be talking to about this.”

“Who is?”

“How did you know? I mean, I never told and she and I were the only two who knew. Well, Aunt Rosa knew, but she’s been dead for nearly thirty years. I don’t understand how you knew.”

“I guessed. I don’t know. I may have dreamed it up. Seems like I once overheard you and momma talking about her secret. I assumed the secret was about me. It had to be. Why?” I paused trying to find the right words, but they didn’t come to me.

“Because, I knew I never fit in and that I was treated differently by…”

“That’s why you were my favorite. I wanted to make up for…”

I could hear her sobbing on the other end. They were soft and tender moans. The kind a child utters when she’s lost a beloved pet.

“Oh Randy, please forgive me? Please forgive me. I never meant to hurt you!”

“Tell me what it is.”

Again, there was silence, but it was quickly followed by the voice of an operator sounding in my ear.

“Hello,” I cried. “Hello. Aunt Katie, are you there?”

I slammed the receiver down on the phone and collapsed into my chair. Within seconds, my wife was entering the room.

“You all right?” she asked.

I looked at her, smiled, and then proceeded to lie to her. “Never better, sweetie. Never better.”

“Sure,” she said as she backed out of the room and closed the door behind her. She knew that there was something wrong and was allowing me time to think it through. I was grateful that she understood that I needed sometime to sort through this.

Over the next few minutes, I began to contemplate what was happening. “So, there was something to all this. I hadn’t been imaging things all these years.” I was both frightened and comforted by this revelation. “Now that my suspicions were confirmed, what was I supposed to do with this tidbit?” Did I really want to know the answer?

I spent the next hour or so playing out the various possible scenarios in my mind. For each argument I came up with for wanting to know the secret, I came up with an equal and just as convincing counter argument. I’d lived over forty years without knowing the truth and I took comfort in that, but I also knew that I wanted to know why I had been the black sheep of the family.

I always believed that I had been adopted, but that was the lie I told myself as a child so that I could get through the abuse and loneliness. It was the kind of loneliness that comes being always on the outside looking in and hoping against hope that I’d one day be accepted. As a child, I secretly fantasized that my real parents would one day come back and claim me. When they did claim me, they’d love and accept me; no questions asked. I knew that when they returned they’d show me what it’s like to be a part of a family built upon love and not on lies.

Even though part of me knew I’d regret it, I made up my mind to find out the truth. The curiosity would eat me alive if I didn’t follow through with it. It would gnaw on me like a tiny bug slowly eating away at my insides and my sanity.

I took a few minutes to figure out how I was going to proceed with this endeavor. During this time, I thought of all the people I could possibly call about this. How had this been hidden from me all these years? Had I been told the truth and had rejected it? I didn’t know.

Once my mind began to clear, I began to make a list of all the people I thought might possibly know of this secret. After I completed the list, I began to number them by the likelihood of their knowledge. Eventually, I narrowed the list down to three people and of those three, I chose my uncle, Donald, as the most likely candidate to have knowledge of this.

Uncle Donald was a retired preacher and my dad’s confidante. They were more than just brothers. He and dad were best friends as well. The more I thought about it the more I became convinced that he had to know something about it. Once I convinced myself that my logic was strong, I picked up the telephone and began dialing.

After two rings, a soft but gravelly voice buzzed in my ear. “Hello, Randy,” Donald spoke.

“How did you know it was me?”

“Caller ID. Whatcha think?”

“It didn’t dawn on me that you’d have that.”

“Yep, what can I do for you and how are you getting along since, well, you know?”

“I’m surviving; still confused by it all, but hanging in there.”

“You know God has a plan for everything? Romans 8:28 states, ‘that God works all things for the good of those who love Him and are called by Him.’”

“I know all about that. You’ve drilled that verse into my head since I was a child.”

“Did you know that your daddy gave his life to the Lord less than a week before he died? I was there when he accepted the Lord and I was the man that planted him in the water.”

“That’s nice and all, but that’s not why I called.”

“Son, knowing God is the only thing worth knowing. The Lord is the answer to all your problems and is the beginning of true wisdom.”

Shocked by his words, I interrupted him. “Why did you say that?”

“I’ve been a Christian since I was fifteen. I’ve been a preacher for nearly fifty years. If you live a life style that long, you come to know the ins and outs of it. Believe me when I tell you that I’ve been around enough to know what the Lord can and can’t do. If you let Him, He’ll answer all your prayers and even some you didn’t know you were asking.”

“That’s all well and good, but I didn’t call to talk about God. I’m not even sure I believe in such a being.”

“Too bad, He believes in you. He’s got me praying for you at this moment.”

“Tell him I appreciate that, but He’s got a lot to prove if He wants me to believe in Him.”

“That’s all right. He’s patient and I know He’s working on you. I’ve been expecting your call for about a month now.”

Chills shot up my spine. Donald told the truth regardless of the circumstances. If he stated he’d been expecting a call from me, then he had. I’d known him all my life and had never known of him lying.

“You’ve got a load on your mind, don’t you?”

There’s something about his voice that never fails to bring comfort to me. When he spoke, I felt like I was talking directly to God. I once told this to him and he laughed and stated that I was talking to God because there were really three of us having that conversation even though I could only see two.

“Unc, I need to ask you something and I want you to promise me that you’ll give me an honest answer and not hold anything back from me. Will you do it?”

“I can’t promise you something until I hear your question, but you know I’ll be truthful with you.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m not sure I know how to even ask this. I maybe crazy to even consider what I’m considering, but I’ve got a notion in my mind and it’s eating at my soul. I need to know something.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“Promise me you won’t laugh when I tell you.”

“You know I won’t do that.”

“Okay, here she goes. Am I adopted?”

“What?”

“Am I adopted?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I know there’s a secret my family has kept from me and I know it involves my birth. My guess is that I’m adopted. I’ll be honest with you. That’d explain a lot of things to me.”

“What kind of things?” he asked.

“Like, why I was treated differently. Like, why I was always the black sheep. Like, why I felt unloved and like an outcast. Please, tell me that I’m not making this up. I know I’m not that paranoid. I know I was treated differently than my brother and sisters.”

“Woo,” I heard him blow into the mouthpiece. “You’re asking a great deal of me.”

“Then I’m right. My family is keeping a secret from me. Tell me what it is. I have to know! You’ve got to tell me because no one else will. What is the big mystery about my birth?”

“Whoa, slow down. You’re moving to fast for me.”

“Okay, tell me.”

I took a deep breath and my heart skipped a couple of beats as I stood there listening for him to speak.

“Randy, I made a promise to your dad even before you were born. I promised him that I would say absolutely nothing about what he was going to tell me. I’ve kept that promise for over forty years. I’m not about to break it now.”

“What?” I screamed. “You can’t do that! I have to know the truth. I demand you tell me! You have too! Please!”

I spent the next few minutes screaming at him at the top of my lungs. Whether I used foul language or not, I can’t say. All I know is that I would have strangled him had he been there with me. I was shaking once the eruption within me died away. Once that happened I began to softly sob.

“Randy,” you still there?” he asked in a tender voice.

“Y-Yes.”

“I couldn’t hear you and thought you had hung up.”

“I’m sorry I don’t mean to take this out on you.”

“I know. It must be hard for you.”

“Donnie, I’ve lived all my life knowing that I was different; that I didn’t fit in and now I am close to finding out why and I’m being stonewalled by the only three people that I know have the answers.”

“Who are the three people?”

“They’re you, momma and Aunt Katie.”

“I never knew Katherine knew.”

“And she won’t tell me. Just as you won’t”

“Randy, I made a promise.”

“Damn your promise! Didn’t it die with dad?”

“No, but I have some news for you. I have a letter written by your dad about a month before he died. It’s for you. He told me I was to give it to you only if you asked for it and believe me; this qualifies as an asking if ever there was one.”

“What does is say?”

“I don’t know, but I assume its has the answers your looking for.”

“Would you open up and read it to me?”

“Nope, I promised…”

“And you’re going to keep this one too, aren’t you?”

“Yes, he even had a back up plan for me should you die.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he said were you to die before I did, then I was to burn this letter.”

“And you don’t know what it contains?”

“No, not really, but I can guess.”

“So, can I.”

“Donnie, what did you mean with that comment about me dying before you?”

“Your dad knew he was on borrowed time the day he entrusted that letter to me. He’d gone to the doctor and they told him his heart was in poor condition and that he could have a massive heart attack at any time.”

“That explains a great deal. Why…”

“What explains a great deal?”

“Why my dad who had a heart as strong as an ox’s dies of a heart attack.”

“Your dad’s heart wasn’t that strong. He’s suffered through a couple of minor heart attacks over the last year alone.”

“What? How’d you know this?”

“He told me. He wouldn’t even tell you mother. He told me and that’s how he came to the Lord. Once he got saved, I baptized him myself. I dunked him that day in your sister’s indoor pool. He had begun to make the final arrangements for his death over a year ago. You know him. He’s like you. He’s got to plan for every thing.

“It’s kinda odd and spooky if you think about it. He’s had everything arranged for at least a year now. He prepaid his funeral. He picked out his own suit. He’d even arranged with the veterans people to get two flags, one for you and one for your mother. He left nothing undone. It still gives me the willies to think about how efficient he was. Your mother didn’t even have to sign a check. It was all taken care of in advance.”

“No one told me.”

“No one knew but me.

“Listen Randy, it’s Friday and I’m not going to be able to get to the post office until Tuesday. I’ll get this into the mail and you should have it by Wednesday, Thursday at the latest.”

“What am I supposed to do about it until then?”

“I wish I knew. Until, then,” and he hung up before I could utter a word.

“That’s two down and one to go,” I said as I put down the receiver.

Mom was the last person I wanted to talk to about this situation. She’d never let me know what was taking place. She’d kept this secret for my entire life and she’d even allowed it to drive a wedge through our relationship. She seemed perfectly willing to destroy what little relationship we had left provided that it would preserve her secret.

Knowing this, I had to ask myself if it was worth it. On the one hand, I had the curiosity that was killing me and on the other one, I had the hope of reconciling with my mom. This would be the hardest choice I’d ever have to make in my life. I had to choose between the cold hard reality of the truth and the promise of the fulfillment of a life long dream. Neither option promised happiness as far as I could see.

I spent the next few hours trying to avoid this choice. I was able to complete a dozen returns in record time. I even had time to review them for a second time and was forced to make a change on the second one. By the time I was e-mailing the files to the government, my wife was calling me to dinner.

After supper, I read a dinosaur book to my son and then went back to my office. I sat in my chair for a while and tried to muster up the courage to call my mother. After about ten minutes of debate, I decided to wait until the morning to call.

I had trouble sleeping that night and was up and stirring before dawn. My e-mail contained the information on several more returns that Malcolm had sent me. I decided that I’d wait until ten o’clock before I’d call momma. I wound up waiting until sometime after noon before I mustered the courage to place that call. Once I decided to do it, I picked up the phone and began dialing her number. She picked up on the fifth ring.

“Hello,” she said.

“Mom, this is Randy.”

“How’re you doing son?”

“Well and you?”

“As well as can be expected, you know, given the circumstances.”

“Mom, I don’t want to beat around the bush. I’ve got something I have to ask.”

“If you’re calling to apologize, don’t worry about it. Momma’s already forgiven you.”

“Apologize? Are you kidding?”

“No, after the way you carried on Thursday, I’m surprised I’m even talking to you.”

This was something I had not expected. I was momentarily taken aback by her words. Unsure of what to do, I hesitated, but she didn’t.

“If you didn’t call to apologize, then why did you call? If you’re trying to finish the argument you started, I’ll hang up on you. I won’t allow a son of mine to be disrespectful to his mother.”

“I didn’t call to argue with you. I’ve got a question to ask.”

“Ask it.”

I could hear the caution in her words and I imagined her on the other end standing ready to pounce when I asked or stated the wrong thing.

“I was wondering about something and I was hoping you could help me with it.”

“I’m listening.”

“I don’t even know how to ask this, so, I’ll come on out with it.”

I heard her take a deep breath and then silence.

“Mom, I was wondering what big secret you are keeping that involves me?”

“Where did you hear that? Have you been talking to you aunt, Katherine?”

“Yes.”

“What did she tell you?” Her voice changed. I could hear the fear in her voice.

“Nothing, she denied knowing anything about it.”

“She’s right, there’s nothing to it.” This time I heard relieve in her words.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Are you trying to start a fight?”

“Nope, just get at the truth.”

“There’s no truth to get at. You’re wasting your time on some deranged and childish fantasy.”

“Uncle Donald doesn’t think so. As matter of fact, he admits there’s something out there, but he refuses to tell me what it is. He suggested I talk to you.”

“You believe Donald?” She forced a laugh. “He’s getting senile. Everybody knows that.”

“He’s sending me a letter that is supposed to tell me what this is about. Do you want me to wait until I get the letter or are you going to tell me now?”

I was met by silence. This went on for about twenty seconds and then I head a click from where she had placed the receiver back on the telephone. Unsure of what else to do I called my brother to have him go check on her to ensure she was okay.

The whole situation didn’t make sense to me. The one question I was asking myself was, why? Sure, I’d seen her change her emotions on a dime before, but never like this. What triggered this outburst?

As I played those few minutes over and over in my mind, I tried to retrace my actions so that I could figure out what happened. I walked through each step slowly and deliberately. I tried to relive everything I had done from the time we buried dad to the time mother threw me out of her house. The answer was in there and I knew it. As the night passed into day, I became obsessed with finding the answer.

The next morning I was sitting at the desk in the small bedroom I use as my office when my wife entered. I was staring blankly at the computer when she spoke to me.

“What are you doing?”

Her voice startled me and I nearly tumbled out of my chair and accidentally kicked the desk as I fought to regain my balance. My left big toe hit the bottom of that fake cherry table so hard it popped like a shot gun.

“Ouuuuuch!” I shouted as I fought to keep from falling out of the chair. It took a couple of seconds but I was eventually able to right myself.

“You all right?” Jessica ran over and reached out a hand to help steady me.

“I think I broke my big toe. Why didn’t you knock?”

“The door was open and I thought you were asleep.”

“Sitting at my computer?” I took in a deep breath and reached down to rub my foot. “Oh, it hurts.”

I began to examine my toe. It looked okay and I could move it even though it hurt like the dickens to do so.

My wife walked around to the front of my chair reached over to grab my foot. “Let me see it?”

“Don’t touch it!” I shouted as I pulled my foot away from her. “It might be broken.”

“I doubt it, but I’d still like to see it. Can you move it?”

“Yes, but Kieran could move his finger when he broke it. Remember?”

“If it starts to swell, we’ll have to amputate.” She began to laugh; slowly at first, but then she got tickled and let it fly.

“Ha ha, very funny. I’m glad I amuse you.” I wasn’t angry with her when I said that. I wanted to shame her into having sympathy for me over my hurting toe. Unfortunately, she thought I was being a smart aleck.

“What’s crawled up in you and died? I don’t like being treated this way.”

I started to say something but realized that would only escalate the situation. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t even want to be arguing. She hadn’t meant to startle me and I knew it. Suddenly, the pain in my toe wasn’t as bad as it had been only seconds earlier.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. You scared me and then the toe thing happened. And, well you know.”

“I know.” She began to pat me on the leg. After that, she began to stroke my leg. She hadn’t petted me like that for a long time and I found myself enjoying it. I’ve seen her often lay our son’s head in her lap and stroke his hair like this, but it had been a while since she had touched me like this.

I looked in her eyes and I could see concern in them. They seemed to be pleading with me. They wanted to know what was eating at me. They also contained a look of genuine love and I deeply appreciated that.

“I’ll be all right,” I said as I cupped her face in my hand. “Thank you.”

“Any time. Do you think they’ll have school today?”

“Probably, maybe, who knows? This is Anderson County and they hate to miss school. Have you seen the morning news? What did they say?”

“I haven’t seen a thing,” she replied.

“Should we let him go to school? I mean, think about it. The roads are going to be bad and even if I drive him… What am I talking about? I drove in a blizzard yesterday. That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Why’d you let me do that? We could’ve been killed.”

She shrugged. “I know. I thought about that all the way home. But, I don’t know. I wasn’t going to stay at her house and mom and dad would’ve asked too many questions. I guess I’m as crazy as you are.”

“Crazier, you’re pregnant and our daughter needs to be protected. I’m sorry for getting you into this mess.”

“What mess is that?”

“Me. My family and this whole situation; it’s insane.”

She looked at me with those big brown eyes. It was those eyes – large puppy-dog eyes – that made me fall in love with her. Those eyes were able to look into my soul and find something good and wonderful deep within me. She found a virtue in me that I didn’t know I had. Being around her made me want to be a better person and no one had ever given me such a gift. I had no choice but to fall deeply in love with her and still was.

Jessica was the first woman that ever told me that she believed in me. We’d not been dating three weeks when she said that to me. It was at that instant I knew she was the one for me. I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to prove to myself that I was worthy of the love and trust this beautiful creature bestowed on me.

Touching my arm, she gently kissed me on the cheek. “That’s okay; I got the jewel out of that bunch.”

“I’m not so sure about that. I’m the black sheep of the family.”

“I’ve always had a thing for the odd man out. You know that they’re the ones that change the world or create great and beautiful things.”

“Usually at the cost of their lives.”

“What’s with the negativity?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if life would have been better had I never been born. You know, all I’ve ever seen has been negative. When do I get my chance at the brass ring? I’ve been fighting this battle all my life and am wondering just when to I get a chance to swing for glory?”

Sympathy flashed in her eyes but was quickly replaced with tenderness. “Some people would say you’ve got it pretty good. You just made partner in a nice firm. You’ve got a wonderful son and a daughter on the way and…”

“How do you know I’ve got a daughter on the way?”

“A mother knows and little Emily Brooke is going to be blonde-haired and green-eyed like her daddy and she’s going to have her mother’s body.”

“Hope not. That means I’ll wind up in prison because I’ll have to shoot some of the little boys hanging around this house when she becomes a teenager.”

“Why’s that?”

“Let’s just say that I fell in love with your soul, but the fact that you were built the way you were did not hurt the romance.”

A naughty grin raced across her face. “Randall Johnson, how dare you?”

I could see that she was trying to pretend to be offended by my statement but she was doing a miserable job of it.

“It’s true. I remember that purple and green bikini you used to have. You remember when we went to Mexico. You’d strut around in that little thing and all these guys would watch your every move.”

“Did it make you jealous?”

“Nope, just the opposite. I’d sit there and grin and think to myself, ‘go ahead and look fellas, but she belongs to me’. It made me feel good that I had the most desirable woman there. Man it was such an ego trip.”

“Still think I’m attractive?” she asked as she rubbed her swollen belly.

“I still see that girl with the golden body. You’ve still got it.”

“And you’re such a liar.”

We both began to laugh, but I could see the appreciation in her gaze as she looked at me with those bright shining brown eyes. She smiled and I returned the gesture. She pulled me close and kissed me. It wasn’t not much more than a peck, but it still shot chills up my back.

“You still give me the quivers,” she said after the kiss ended.

“Ditto. You’d better get out of here or this is going to lead to something we are not going to be able to finish.”

“Pity,” she whispered as she left the room.

After a quick shower I was still sleepy, but feeling better than I had earlier. I thought about shaving but decided I’d do that latter. I flipped on the television and began watching the local telecast. They were listing all the schools and business that were closed. They were on the C’s and we live in Anderson County. That meant that I’d have to sit through the whole list or risk missing it.

As I thought about it, I walked over to the computer, called up the Internet, began searching for the station, and clicked on its address. In the upper left hand corner was a “School or No-School” icon. I click on it and a window prompted me to enter the name of the business or school system. I typed in “Anderson County Schools.” Within a split-second, I got a notice that stated that school had been canceled for the day.

“Sweetie,” I called to my wife in the kitchen. “School has been canceled.”

“What about the factory where I work?”

“Just a second.” I typed in Kentucky Tile and Flooring, but nothing came upon the screen. “Doesn’t say. If you need a ride, I can take you to work.”

“Are you crazy? I’d quit before I’d get out in weather like this. Besides with you making partner, I’ve been thinking about quitting anyway.”

“Let ‘Little Man’ sleep a little longer.”

“He can sleep all day as far as I’m concerned. What about you?”

“I’ll call Malcolm, the head of the tax division of the firm, to let him know I won’t be in either. I’m sure he, Darron and Doug’ll understand. Besides, they didn’t expect me back until Monday. You know, grieving and all.”

“But this is tax season.”

“And we have plenty of people who can prepare a return if one is needed. Besides they can always e-mail me the data and I could do the returns here at home.”

She nodded her head in agreement. “Since I’m up, I’ve started breakfast, hungry?”

“Not really, well huh, sorta. Whatcha cooking?”

“The usual; eggs, biscuits, sausage, and jelly.”

“Make mine turkey sausage and throw in some fried potatoes and you got yourself a deal.”

“Okay, wanna help?”

“In a minute, I’ve got to call Malcolm and let him know I won’t be in today.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

I picked up my cell phone because it had Malcolm’s number on speed dial. After a few clicks, I heard that robotic tone ringing in my ear. After the third such ring, I heard a voice on the other side state, “Hello.”

“Malco, this is Randy.”

“You didn’t have to call. I know you’re snowed in up there in those mountains. I heard you guys got over thirty inches of snow.”

“No, I’m home.”

“Surely, you weren’t crazy enough to try to drive in that weather.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“You could’ve been killed. Are you nuts?”

Probably, but mostly just mad…”

“As a hatter, whatever that means, but you’re definitely it.”

I laughed. “Look, I’m not going to be able to make it in today.”

“Big deal, nobody is.”

“You have any information you can send me and I’ll do it at home.”

“They made everyone leave early yesterday and I gave them all enough work to keep them all weekend. I got more than enough to keep you busy through the weekend. Let me make sure I’ve got your correct e-mail address and I’ll download some stuff and see that you get some of my work.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “Nobody is going to get out in weather like this.”

“I’m going back to bed. If you have any questions, wait until after lunch to call. I was hoping to sleep in late, but that’s gone.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t sweat it. One of you guys was bound to call. I’d warned the others and would have fired anybody else who called. I’ll let you slide since you didn’t know.”

I heard him chuckle. “Goodbye,” I said.

“See ya on Monday,” he said and then hung up without saying another thing.

I checked the computer again and there it was. KTF was closed for the day and the first shift was closed on both Saturday and Sunday. That’ll make her happy I thought. Saturday overtime was mandatory and Sunday was always optional. She was looking at a three day weekend and I knew that would make her happy and for the first time in over a week, I smiled.

I was on my fourth tax return of the day when Kieran walked into the room. I was unaware of his presence until he spoke.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I turned to see him rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. His hair stood up in the back and for the second time in as many days, he looked like Alfalfa from the Our Gang movies.

“Good morning, Alfalfa.”

“My name is Kieran and not Falfalfa.”

I could hear the indignation is his voice. It was early for him and he was in no mood to be bothered.

“You’re right. Did you have a good night’s sleep?”

“Don’t we have school today?”

“Nope, and momma doesn’t have work and neither do I. It looks like the three of us have the day off. I was thinking that we could go outside and make a snow man and maybe even an igloo like we did at granny’s.”

“Dad, why is the snow deeper at granny’s than here?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I guess it has something to do with the mountains. It snows more there than it does here.”

“Is that ‘cause the mountains are closer to the sky than the flat land?”

“I suppose that’s true. What do you think?”

“It makes sense to me.”

I could see that he was thinking about it. He looked at me with one eye shut and his lips sticking out to one side as if he was forming a deformed kiss. In a split-second, his expression changed and he became very serious.

“Dad, why does granny hate you?”

A sudden jolt shot through my body. I began to look upon my son with a new respect. I knew him to be a bright young man, but I never knew him to be this observant. I hesitated before I spoke. I was looking for something to say and hoping to alleviate his fears.

“Granny doesn’t hate me. She just doesn’t know how to take me. She doesn’t understand me. Am I making sense to you?”

“No, but if granny doesn’t hate you, then why does she pick on you?”

“You noticed that did ya?”

“I’m six dad, not stupid.”

“That’s not a nice word to say?”

“I’m sorry. I won’t say it again.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“Deal.” He stuck out his hand and I took it in mine with a quick shake.

I thought for a second and then decided that I didn’t want to pursue this conversation so I decided to change the subject. I was rubbing my face when an idea hit me. “Would you like to shave with me?”

He didn’t say a word, but shook his head to indicate that he did. I took off his pajama top and walked him into the bathroom. I also took off my T-shirt and then turned on the hot water. As the water began to heat up, I pulled out a cup holding my shaving soap and brush.

“Does it hurt to shave?” asked Kieran.

“It can, but if you’re careful it won’t. The first thing we must do is put some hot water on our faces.”

I cupped my hand, stuck it under the water, and then proceeded to splash it on my face. He tried to follow my lead but wound up splashing liquid all over the mirror. I began to lather up the brush and then slathered the soap all over his face. I then did the same to mine. Once we had our faces soaped, I gave him a disposable razor with the cap still on it and I took out my razor.

“The first thing you want to do is to shave your neck.” I pulled the razor up from the bottom of my neck towards my chin.

“See how I’m doing it?”

He smiled and then followed my lead. “Like this?” he asked.

“Perfect. Once you have the neck completed, then you move on to the face.” Again, I showed him what to do and he followed my lead.

“Now we come to the tricky part, the mouth. If you’re not careful, you’ll cut yourself.

“Will it bleed a lot?”

“Depends on how you cut yourself. It’s possible so you have to be careful. It hurts like the dickens when you get cut.”

“I won’t cut myself.”

“I know. You’re good at things like that.”

He didn’t say a thing, but he looked at me with those big brown eyes he got from his mother and I could tell that he was pleased by my comment.

As we finished our shave, I took a towel down and wiped both of our faces. After that, I took and wet a washcloth and wiped it over his face. He was smiling from ear-to-ear when I began washing mine. I dried both of our faces and then smiled at him.

“That was your first shave,” I said. “How did you like it?”

“Aren’t you going to put any smell good stuff on me?”

“I forgot. I’m glad you reminded me.”

“You can’t shave without putting smelly stuff on your face. It’s not legal.”

“That’s right. I don’t want you getting in trouble with the law.”

“You either.”

I laughed despite myself. “Me either.”

Over the next thirty minutes, I bathed again and then bathed him. We were both clean and dressed in fresh pajamas when my wife came into the master bathroom.

“Why did you bath?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you going to go outside and play?” she asked.

“Hurray,” shouted Kieran.

“Yes, we are,” I replied.

“Then you didn’t need to bath a second time.”

“Why did we bath?” inquired my son.

“Because daddy’s not smart enough to think of that.” They laughed and I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, I guess we’ll have to bath again sometime today.”

Forty minutes later, the three of us were starting the first of the three large balls we would use to make the snowman. The first level of snow was as tall as Kieran. The second was about half the size of the first level. The head was about twice the size of a basketball. We used checkers for his eyes, beads for his mouth, celery for his ears, a carrot for his nose and the plastic pink grass from an Easter basket as his hair. We used a couple of decorative toothpicks to secure the grass to its head and then secured an old farmers hat on top of the pink wig. The snowman looked like a combination of a sixties hippy and an eighties punk rocker.

Once the snowman was completed, my son decided that he wanted to make snow angels. As he was completing his first one, I began to run yesterday’s events through my head. It was gnawing on me like a rat picking at the bait in a trap and that’s what bothered me. I kept expecting a giant trap to snap shut and seal my fate forever. If it was a trap, it would be a trap that held no chance for rescue.

He was completing his second angel when I decided I needed to go back into the house.

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “But daddy has some work he has to do, so I’m going to have to go back into the house.”

“Are you gonna do taxes?” he asked.

“Yep, and some other stuff too.”

“Will you stay and watch me do one more?”

My wife looked at me and asked, “Will you?”

“I can stay for two more, if you want me too?”

He didn’t say a word but flopped down on the ground and began flapping his arms and legs. He did this for about six times and then he stood up, looked at me and asked, “How’s that one.”

I pretended to look at it with a critical eye. I began rubbing my chin hoping to milk this for all it was worth.

“Well?” he asked.

“If I were judging it, I’d say it’s probably your best work yet.”

A smile engulfed his face and he ran and jumped into my arms. As I picked him up, he wrapped his arms around me and nearly squeezed my head off my shoulders.

“You haven’t seen nothing yet.” I could hear the excitement in his voice. “Wait ‘til you see the next one. I’ll bet it’ll be the best one; ever!”

“That’s a big job. Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“Quit teasing him,” injected my wife playfully.

“Watch this,” he said as he shook free from me. Once he hit the ground, he fell flat on his back and began that familiar fanning motion. This continued to kick for fifteen to twenty cycles. After that, he stood up and pointed to it. “I’ll be that’s the best one you’ve ever seen.”

“Without a doubt! I’m so jealous I can’t stand it.”

“That’s all right dad, you can’t be good at everything.”

“Thank you,” I said as I tried to keep from laughing. “Now I have to go in and work.”

“Just one more, please?”

“No, I’ve got to do this. It’s important to me.”

“Am I important to you?”

I scooped him up and pulled him close to me. I wanted to shout what I was about to say, but due to the pride swelling within me, I managed only a whisper. “More than anything else in the world, Kieran. More than anything else in the world.”

Everyone has the right to make a mistake during their lifetime. I have made several, but if I had to pick only one, it would have been my choice of forgoing graduate school in order to do a stint in the Corps. Don’t get me wrong on this one, I am proud of my service and I probably grew more as a person during that time than any other period of my life, but I hated it. I spent five years, nine months and twenty-two days in the service and I hated five years, nine months and twenty days of that time, with the first and last days being the only two exceptions.

There’s nothing wrong with the Marine Corps and for many people it has been a good fit for them. I was a square peg in a round hole. I was a bad fit for them, they knew it, and I knew it. Even though I hated it, I still take pride in the fact I was a Marine Officer. To this day, if I see someone wearing a Marine Corps uniform or sporting a USMC T-shirt, or even a tattoo of a bulldog or other Corps symbol, I go up and introduce myself to him or her. Another thing the Corps left me with is a feeling of sadness I get when I hear that a young Marine was killed in combat. It bothers me when a member of the other branches of the military is killed, but I feel actual pain when it’s a Marine. Don’t ask me to explain that one because I can’t.

I went in the service with high hopes and big dreams. I had wanted to be an astronaut since I saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, Jr., walk on the moon when I was only a tiny boy.

I still remember that event as though it was yesterday. My uncle Delano was sitting beside me in grandmother’s house. I remember seeing a fan blowing air across the living room, but the house was still stifling hot. I recall seeing the sweat drip down my uncle’s face as he pulled me near him and said, “See that Randy? That could be you one of these days. You might even be able to go to Mars. Who knows what might happen in your lifetime? Wouldn’t it be nice to be an astronaut like Captain Kirk?”

“Yes,” I replied and decided at that moment that I wanted to be an astronaut. That dream would stay with me for eighteen years only to be crushed by the United States Marine Corps.

I entered military service on June 26, 1985. I was assigned to class 125 at Quantico, Virginia. I joined because I felt as though I had to do something spectacular, something so awesome that the nation in general and my family in particular would come to adore me. I joined for two reasons. The first was to chase a dream that I knew would make me unique and thus ensure that my family would love me. The other was because I thought that were I to die in war, then my family, who never seemed to love me in life, would at least love me in death. I was willing to make that compromise. If it took my dying in order to get someone to love me, then I was perfectly willing to trade one for the other.

“Soooo, you think you’ve got what it takes to be a Marine Corps Officer,” the recruiter asked, as he looked me in the eyes. “Many people think they have what it takes, but most don’t. Why should I believe you’ll be any different?”

I looked him over and smiled. He was standing there in a pair of dress blue slacks and a tan shirt. His hair may have been a light brown or sandy blond, but I couldn’t be sure. It was so short he may as well have been bald.

“You have to,” I replied with as much pretentiousness as he seemed to be faking. “The only person who needs to be convinced is me. I could care less about what you believe.”

The fake grin he had been wearing vanished and was replaced by a hard-edged stare. He looked me over and then harrumphed indignantly. “I’ve seen your kind before. You thing you know everything, but you don’t know do-diddly-squat.”

I looked at him and laughed defiantly before I spoke. “Sweet talking me like that’s not going to win you any points. I’m used to such silver-tongued talk.”

“I bet you are.” His expression suddenly changed and he got a sly look on his visage. “What can I do for you? You interested in becoming one of the world’s greatest warriors?”

“Please spare be the B.S. I’m interested in becoming a pilot and will join any branch of service that is willing to put me in the cockpit.”

“Just like that?” he interrupted. “No questions asked.”

“They can ask all they want, but I’m telling you what I want.”

“We’ll see. Have you taken the AQT/FAR?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

He smiled as though he’d scored a point against me and then resumed his original posture. “The aviation qualification test and the flight aptitude review.”

“Never heard of ‘em.”

“You need to pass them before you can be a pilot.”

“When do we take it? I’m ready.”

“Hold on. Let me make a call and see when the next exam is being given.”

He got on the telephone and made a call. He spoke to someone one the other end for about five minutes. Once finished, he put down the phone, looked at me and said, “You can take the test anytime you like, but you have to take it at one of the MEPS stations. There is one in Louisville, another in Cincinnati and a third, which is the closest one. It’s in Beckley, West Virginia. When would you like to go?”

“Let’s do it tomorrow. I’m ready.”

“Okay.” He paused, took a deep breath and began to look me over a second time. He stared at me for a couple of minutes. I was beginning to become uncomfortable with the whole situation and he must have sensed it because the instant I was going to say something to break up the tension, he spoke.

“Level with me. Why are you really joining the Corps? Seriously, don’t B.S. me. Tell me the truth. I’ll know if you’re lying to me. If I believe you, I’ll schedule you an appointment. If not, I’ll toss you out on your behind. And don’t think I won’t do it.”

I stood to accept his challenge. I was expecting him to do the same, but he didn’t. He sat there for a few seconds before he looked up at me and smiled. The look he gave me disarmed me because it was not what I had anticipated. It was a genuine look of respect and not anger. His grin became even bigger just before he said the most amazing thing to me.

“Maybe there’s hope for you after all. Now sit and tell me your story. The truth.”

I hesitated and thought about leaving. I stood up and began walking towards the door. As I was about to exit the room, he called to me, “If you leave now, I’ll never deal with you again.”

My head jerked as anger instantaneously welled up in my body. I turned around to face him and shot daggers at him with my eyes. “You son of a….”

“Watch your mouth. A Marine officer needs passion, but he also must exercise restraint. Any fool can lash out in anger, but only a real man understands how to harness that emotion.”

He pointed to a chair located in front of his desk. “Sit down and tell me the truth. If I believe you, I’ll move heaven and earth to get you in the Corps. If not, I’ll send you on your way with no hard feelings at all.”

I hesitated for a brief minute and then I made my way to the chair I stared at him suspiciously the entire time. I never took my eyes off him. It was as though I was expecting his head to peal back and a demon jump out of it. I took my place in the chair about the same time he took a seat.

“Well, what do you want to know?” I asked and felt silly in doing it.

“The truth. You’re educated, intelligent and have a bright future in front of you. Any branch of the service would be glad to have you, so, why do you want to join the Corps?”

“Because you’re the best of the best and I want to be a part of that. I want…”

“Horse feathers, any fool can spout that bit of drivel, tell me the truth or get out.”

We sat there locked in a battle of wills for a couple of minutes. I don’t know how he knew I wasn’t being honest with him, but he did. I was hoping that he’d get bored if I stared at him long enough, but he didn’t. I was determined not to be the first to be the first to speak and he was just as determined to do the same. I don’t know how long we stared at each other but it must have been a while, because only the mail carrier entering the room and speaking broke our battle of wills.

“Good morning Capt. Mahoney,” the postal employee said. “How’s it going?”

The recruiter pointed his finger at me and said, “You stay where you’re at.”

He looked up at the other man and responded, “I’m fine John. How are you? That baby getting any better? I know she’s been sick.”

The man had a look of hopelessness in his eyes when he spoke. “They can’t seem to get her to respond to treatment. She’s in God’s hands and that’s exactly where I want her to be. I appreciate your prayers for her. Your pastor came by to see us and he said that you made him come out and visit. It did my wife a world of good. Either way it goes, I’ll not forget what you’ve done.”

“Don’t mention it. You’d do the same for me.”

“Mebbe, but you guys have been a godsend for us. Take care.”

“We’ll be praying for your family.”

The man waved his approval of Captain Mahoney’s words.

As the recruiter looked at me, I noticed something different about him. There was a look of compassion in his eyes. I was shocked by this. I had expected Marines to be these mindless, emotionless killers, but this man had kind eyes.
“How long have you known that guy?” I asked trying to change the subject.

“Not long, maybe, six months. I used to go to his church and his six-year-old daughter is dying of cancer. We’re praying for her. She needs a miracle. I don’t know what the Lord has planned for her, but John’s living out my nightmare. I’ve got a couple daughters myself.”

“I didn’t think Marines were supposed to have feelings.”

“Just the opposite, we’re a very emotional bunch. You gonna stop wasting my time and tell me the truth or do we have to keep playing footsies?”

“All right, you win. I’ll tell you why I want to join the Corps.”

He walked over and closed his door. He then turned the ringer off on his telephone. He sat back down, looked me straight in the eye and said, “You have my undivided attention, proceed.”

I took a deep breath and thought about leaving, but there was something in his eyes that held my attention. They seemed to be saying, “Tell me all you have to tell. I won’t laugh and I won’t judge you.” I hesitated for a few seconds and then began. Once I started, my story flowed out of me like water from a pitcher.

“I’ve never felt as though I belonged to anyone or anywhere. I know, or I hope my parents love me, but I wouldn’t bet the house on it. I’m so different from the rest of them. I’ve always been the black sheep of the family and secretly fear that they are ashamed of me.

“The truth is that I want to belong to something greater than myself. I want to be accepted for who I am. I want to be understood, respected, and even bragged on a bit. I want to feel appreciated for something I’ve accomplished and mostly, I want to be…”

I stopped unable to continue because I feared being ridiculed by the man, but he didn’t make fun of me. His reaction sealed my fate.

“You want to be loved, don’t you?”

Embarrassed by the situation, I tried to speak but struggled to say just the right thing. “Yes, no, I don’t know. I’ve been told that I am a loser and a plague sent by God to rain punishment on my family. I’ve been told that I am a no account and that prison is my ultimate destiny. I’ve been told that I am worthless and a mistake that should never have been born.”

“But you don’t believe that, do you? Is that why you’re joining the Corps?”

“No, I’m joining because I’m too big of a chicken to put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. I’m joining because I’m a coward. I’m joining because I want to prove to them that I’m not worthless.”

“You trying to convince them or yourself?”

“What difference does it make? I’ve never been accepted and never will be. That’s why I’m joining. That’s why I chose the Marine Corps. I want to be toughened up so badly that nothing will ever penetrate into my heart and therefore not be able to hurt me again.”

“We can’t do that. Nor would we want to. We need men in the Corps that have compassion and care about others. It’s why we do what we do.”

I wanted to get up and run out of his office, but couldn’t. I’d came this far and had to see it through. I wanted to show him I was strong and that I could handle anything that came my way. I failed. I sat there as tears slowly meandered down my face. I lowered my eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see the shame I was now feeling. I didn’t want him to see that I was really a scared little boy instead of a man fully grown.

“I’m sorry,” I squeaked in a child’s voice. “I guess I’m not Marine material. I’ll go now.”

As I was leaving, he called to me. “Would it help if I told you that you’re exactly what I look for when I recruit an officer candidate? I think you have the makings of an outstanding officer. It will be the Corps job to prove to you just how unique and wonderful you really are.”

“Me?” I asked doubting everything he was saying.

“Yep, you. I’ve never met a man as honest as you. Most are still lying to me when I send them off to Quantico, but you, you’re different. You were willing to be honest regardless of the consequences. I know that couldn’t have been easy for you and I respect you for that.

“Now, the Corps can’t change your situation, but we can teach you how to turn that negative into a positive and I think that is what you really want.

“You want respect? You’ll have to earn it, but you’ll get it. You want to be recognized for your achievements? You’ll have to work hard, but the Corps will recognize you for them. Everything you need, we can offer and more. You might not be able to see it now, but the thing you need the most is a little dose of confidence and self-respect. We’ll give you that in spades.”

Three weeks later, I was flying out of Beckley, West Virginia heading for Quantico, Virginia and OCS (Officer Candidate School). A guy I had known from elementary school accompanied me, but we’d be sent to different classes for training.

I only have a few memories about OCS. Some are wonderful and I’ll treasure them all my life. Most are bad and as a result, they set the tone for my career in the Corps. I went in with high hopes but some of the things I saw during my training dashed those.

I was hurt in the third week of training and had to go to medical rehabilitation. I was dropped from my original class, but was picked up six weeks later by another by another one.

During this time of convalescence, I became depressed and thought about DORing from the program. I struggled with that thought the entire time I was rehabbing. The only reason I didn’t quit was because I feared going home a beaten man. The thought that I would have to look my parents in the eyes and tell them that they were right, I was a complete and total loser ate at me like a rat gnawing on some cheese and that was the only thing that kept me going during those rough times. Half way through my rehab I made myself a promise that the only way I was leaving Quantico was either across the parade deck as a Marine Officer or in a pine box heading to my final resting place.

One day I was left alone in the rehab unit. I was lying in my rack contemplating my future. When I realized that I was all alone, I pulled the sheets over my head and silently prayed. I had never done that before in my life. I didn’t even believe in God, but desperation will push you to do things you never thought you’d do.

As I lay there, I prayed, “God, if you really exist, listen to me. I don’t know what’s going on with my life. I wish I did. I’d like to ask you a couple of things if I can? What have I done that’s so wrong? Why am I so hated by those that should love me? What sin have I committed? Why was I born if my purpose in life is to be a curse to those I love the most? What’s the matter with me? Please, let me know and lastly, is it always going to be this way?”

Once I was finished, I began to silently sob. I was afraid I’d be discovered and thus be known as a wimp instead of officer material. Therefore, I kept a constant vigil so as not to be seen.

As I lay, there I heard music playing in the background. I hadn’t noticed this before. I hadn’t heard the sweet melodious sound of music in weeks, therefore, I stopped all that I was doing and listened to the soft rock sounds that seemed to be coming out of the very walls themselves.

As I began to focus on the music a song ended and then the soothing voice of the male deejay began to dance within my ears. “These next two songs on two for Tuesday go out to that person out there that is experiencing a bit of doubt.”

My head shot up and I snapped it to the left and right looking for that radio. I knew the instant I heard his voice that he was talking to me. Prior to that instant, God had never been real to me, but now I was experiencing the incredible miracle of an answered prayer. I don’t know how I knew, but these next two songs were meant for me and for me alone.

The Deejay’s voice echoed in my ears. “I hope you enjoy these songs and hang in there. I’ll let the music do the talking for me.”

I was struggling to breathe as the first song began to play. I recognized it before the third note had sounded. It was No One is to Blame by Howard Jones. I struggled to sit up and began to cry. These were the cleansing tears of joy that poured from the deepest recesses of my very soul. This was the first time in my life I felt as though I wasn’t evil personified. Each tear that flowed purged a tiny bit of guilt from my overburdened heart. Eventually, I began to sob like a baby, but these were tears of unadulterated joy. I had never experience tears of happiness before. As a matter of fact, I learned not to cry as a very young child and thus had never experienced the shear pleasure that occasionally accompanies tears.

The next song was an even greater godsend. It too was from Ho Jo and it was Things Can Only Get Better. If the first song soothed my conscious, then this one offered me hope, a hope that still burns over twenty-five years later.

I have a special place in my heart for the synthesized music of Howard Jones. Even though he was considered a joke and an untalented musician by some of my peers, I’ll always have a special love for his music because his songs were the first time I ever experience hope in my life. To this day, when things get bad, I begin to sing, “Woe-woe-woe-woe-woe-woe-wote-wah-woooooooe, things can only get better.” It always makes me smile and that gives me just a little extra strength to stand up and fight just one more time.

How do you thank a man for such a gift and how to thank God or the universe for changing your life in a split-second? It still amazes me that my life turned on such a small thing. I went from a pessimistic, half-empty and getting smaller type of guy, to an optimistic, “things can only get better” person in less than ten minutes. Thank you, eternal deity, thank you, Mr. Deejay and thank you, Ho Jo.

My last memory about OCS involved a kid from New Jersey. His name was Franco Pescatilini. He was half-Italian and half Polish and was from a town called Passaic. He had attended Rutgers and majored in English, but his passion was the Marine Corps. He had wanted to be a Marine all his life. The only problem with the guy was that he was shy, timid and the clumsiest man I have ever met.

I don’t know what it was that drew me to him, perhaps I recognized a kindred spirit in him, but whatever it was, I worked harder trying to get Frankie through OCS than I did getting myself through it. I was a natural leader and was recognized as such by the drill instructors. I was put in charge of first squad. Once while talking to a drill instructor, I asked him if he’d put Frankie in my squad.

He looked at me with a combination of indifference and respect. “Sure,” he said. “It’s your funeral.”

“May this candidate be so bold as to say he believes he can get Candidate Pescatilini through this?”

“No you can’t,” replied the DI. “His fate was sealed when he was recruited. He’s not officer material and if you can’t see that, then maybe you aren’t either. You think you’re being noble, but you’re not. He’s a dead fish, cut him loose or he’ll drag you down with him.”

“Duly noted sir,” I replied. “But this candidate must try.”

The DI laughed. “I admire your spunk but not your lack of judgment.”

The farther we got into OCS the harder the DI’s came down on Frankie. Several times I wanted to step in and stop the abuse, but never did because I knew that would be the end of my career and I wasn’t about to give up on the dream of being a pilot and perhaps an astronaut.

I had worked extra hard prior to final inspection. I was confident that Frankie and I were going to pass. I had left no stone unturned for either of us. It had cost me a great deal of capital with my peers, but I was sure the team of Johnson and Pescatilini had beaten the Corps.

During the morning of the final inspection, we were all adorned in our dress blues and looked smartly as we stood erect in front of our lockers. I had to fight to keep from smiling.

“Attention on deck,” shouted a voice and we all snapped to attention. “Colonel on board.”

I stood just a little taller as I heard that voice. I was thrilled with the anticipation of it all. Once we passed this, we were all but Marine Corps Officers. Frankie was standing directly across from me. He looked me in the eyes and I winked at him. We’d beaten them.

The colonel began to walk through the barracks and he looked at each man. “Very impressive,” he said, “very impressive. Gunnery Sergeant, you’ve done an outstanding job. This group is sierra hotel.”

“Thank you sir,” responded the senior drill instructor. “We’ve had a good team.”

The colonel began at the far end of the barracks and stopped in front of each candidate. He would look them over and then ask them one question before he moved on to the next man; at least that was what he did for everybody but Frankie. When he got to my friend, he stopped and began drilling him with a series of questions. He wouldn’t even allow the timid candidate a chance to respond before he’d yell out, “Wrong.”

This continued for a couple of minutes and I could see the look of panic on Frankie’s face. His eyes were pleading with me for help, but I couldn’t. I wanted to scream at the colonel. I wanted to scream and urge Frankie to fight back. I wanted to scream at the DIs to make this all stop, but I didn’t. I stood there focusing on keeping my bearing while under intense pressure.

As suddenly as it had started, the shouting stopped. The colonel walked past Frankie and made a beeline for his locker. When the colonel stopped in front of my friend’s standing closet, he slipped on a pair of white gloves. As he slid on the right hand, I noticed that the pointer finger had a brown stain on it. The colonel then proceeded to rake that finger across the locker. After a couple of strokes, he smiled and then walked back to where my friend was standing.

“What’s this?” asked the colonel as he shoved his finger into Frankie’s face.

It took everything I had to keep from walking over and punching that guy out. This had been a set up from the get go. They wanted Frankie out and despite all the talk of integrity being the trademark of a good Marine they had used devious means to rid themselves of one of the finest men I’d ever met.

“This candidate doesn’t know!” shouted my friend. There was no anger in his voice. As a matter of fact, I’d never heard him in better form.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” shouted the colonel. “It’s dust and you know what that means.”

“This candidate thinks the colonel has made a mistake,” responded Frankie.
Where has this guy been? I thought to myself. Pour it to him, Frankie. I was so proud of the way my friend was standing up to them. Had he been this way the whole time, he’d graduate as honor man.

“Mistake, how have I made a mistake? Is this dust or not?”

“Maybe, this candidate isn’t sure of that but he is sure the colonel has made a mistake.”

“How have I made a mistake? I can’t see it. So, tell me how I’ve made a mistake.”

“The colonel is mistaking this candidate with someone who gives a damn, sir.”

I had to fight to keep from laughing. I scanned the barracks with my eyes and I noticed several other candidates trying not to laugh. Even the senior drill instructor was fighting to keep his composure.

That statement had sealed Frankie’s fate, but no man ever went down more valiantly than did my friend. He had won. The respect he couldn’t garner from his peers while training with them was later heaped lavishly upon him. Everyone in that room realized that if guts and integrity were the hallmarks of a Marine Officer, then this tiny half-Italian half-Pole from New Jersey had it in spades. At that time, I’d never been more proud of anyone as I was Frankie.

That afternoon I was called into the company commander’s office. As I entered the room, I noticed that the company commander, Major Carlos, was sitting at his desk. Standing next to the left side of his desk was my platoon leader, Captain Walker, and on the right side was our squadron commander, Colonel Ridgley. He had been the one that washed out Frankie.

I walked up in front of the major’s desk and presented myself. “Candidate Johnson reporting as ordered sir.”

“At ease,” ordered the colonel before the major had a chance to speak.

I did as ordered. I stole a glance at these men as I followed their orders. The captain was a small boyish looking man and seemed out place in the Marine Corps. The first time that I saw him, I assumed he had joined the Corps because he had come from a long line of Marines so he felt obligated to follow in the family tradition.

The major on the other hand was a man who was born to wear the uniform. As a young officer, he had been a model for a series of recruiting posters. He looked like he belonged in Hollywood. He was the image you see whenever you watch a Marine Corps recruiting advertisement. He had it all; good looks, a great body, charm and charisma. His nickname was “The Total Package” and it fit.

The colonel was a dog-faced man that looked like his mother hand weaned him on sour pickles. He had a grizzled air about him and I could tell that he was a no-nonsense type of person. He was the type that you didn’t want as an enemy.

“Do you know why you are here?” asked the major.

“No sir,” I lied. I assumed I was there to be asked to leave.

“I’ll tell you why,” inject the colonel. “I want to ask you one question. Your career in the Corps may depend on your answer. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Why did you help Pescatilini? From the instant he came here, everyone, even him, knew he wasn’t going to make it, but you fought to save him, why? He’s not Marine Corps material, but you carried his weight as well as your own. That was foolish.”

“A good officer cares about his troops,” I stated with false confidence.

“Yeah, but an incompetent officer, which is what that kid was going to be, will cause great harm to his troops. That’s why he had to go. We had nothing personally against him. I even liked the son of a…” He hesitated. “That’s neither here nor there.

“Do you know how foolish your actions were? I know you think they were admirable and in some ways they were, but foolishness is how I’d describe it.”

He stopped and stared at me for a few seconds before he spoke again. “Do you think you’re officer material?”

“Yes sir!”

“Being a Marine Corps Officer is not an easy job. You have to make decisions and many times people are going to die as a result. Compassion is an admirable trait, but it cannot be more important than the mission. That’s why your friend was let go

“Now, what are we going to do with you? That’s the question the three of us have been debating over the last hour. If it were left up to me, I’d strap your hind end to a rail and run you out of town, but your captain has different ideas. He states you’re the best candidate he’s got. The problem is that Major Carlos is convinced you’ve got the makings of a future commandant. There, in a nutshell, is your problem.

“Do you have any suggestions?”

“This candidate would like to stay, sir.”

“Then answer me this question. Why did you help him?”

“This candidate saw a kindred spirit in candidate Pescatilini. That candidate was an outsider looking in and this candidate has felt that way all his life. This candidate has always been the outsider and, as a result, he has had to fight, tooth and nail, to get the things he wanted. Nothing has ever come easy to him. No one has ever given him a hand. This has made him tough, but always alone. He saw the same spirit in Pescatilini and decided that he was going to help and that he was willing to do what ever it took, provided it was morally and legally right, to help his friend. If that costs this candidate his dream of being an officer, then so be it. My personal integrity is more important than being a Marine.”

I silently cursed myself. I had lost my bearing and had forgotten to speak in the third person on that last statement. Surely they had heard that and I was about to get the boot. I held my head up as high as I could get it. If I was going to go down, I was going down with dignity.

The colonel looked at me and smiled. “I’ve been in the Corps for over twenty years and that’s the best answer I’ve ever heard. Congratulations, I think you are going to make a fine officer.”

Despite my best efforts to prevent it, a smile swept across my face and I stood there grinning like a drunken fool.

“Wipe that smile off you face and get the hell out of here,” shouted the colonel and then he returned my smile.

“Yes sir,” I said as I snapped to attention and saluted.

All three of them snapped to attention and returned my gesture. Once they released their salutes, I released mine. I then did a left face and started heading out the door.

As I turned to leave the room, Major Carlos, stated, “Oh yes, and congratulations Candidate Johnson, you’ll be carrying the guide iron during graduation. You’ve been selected as honor man by your drill instructors.”

To this day, I can’t remember if I walked or floated out of that office. Unfortunately, that would prove to be the highlight of my military career. I left the Corps less than six years later because I had become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of those leaders that preached integrity and demanded it from everyone but themselves.

I don’t remember what day of the week it was, but I do know that it was somewhere in the middle, Wednesday or Thursday. Granny had gone shopping with one of her older daughters and had left me with my uncle and his best friend, Donald.
How these two became best friends is a mystery to me. They looked and acted nothing alike. Delano was tall, dark-haired, light-skinned, dark-eyed and thin. He was terribly handsome and shy in away that drove women wild with desire. He believed in telling the truth at all times even if it was to his detriment. Donald was also tall and thin, but other than that he looked like the photographic negative of Delano. He had blond hair, blue eyes and dark skin. He craved attention and loved being the center of it. If the truth was in him, he never showed it. He was the type that would lie even when the truth would better serve him. Though completely opposite, these two were drawn together like coffee and milk. Apart from each other, they functioned adequately, but together they were a well oiled machine that left a trail of female broken hearts wherever they went.

I was sitting on the porch playing with my toy soldiers and they were sitting on the swing that hung from the ceiling by two chains. They had set up the Japanese soldiers from my Iwo Jima playset and I was busy setting up the Americans.

Once Donald set up the last tan colored warrior, he looked at Delano, smiled and asked, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

My uncle smiled. “Fire it up. I’ll take a drag or two.”

Donald smiled. He reached in his pants pocket and brought out a small self-rolled Prince Albert cigarette. He placed it under his nose and sniff. “Ah, they ain’t nothing like a good doobie.”

Delano smiled and pointed towards the yard. “Let’s go out behind the house were nobody can see or smell this thing. Besides, I don’t feel right about taking a hit on mommy’s porch.”

“You’d better bring little britches with you,” stated Donald. “If something happens to him, your mom a kill both of us.” Delano motioned for me to follow them and I obliged

Behind my grandmother’s house was a fifteen by fifteen foot shed in which she put her deep freeze and water pump. It also contained a heater and bed just in case it was needed. Granny kept the building clean and changed sheets on the bed every month. It was located about twenty feet from the back porch. Since grandma had no neighbors on the left or right the space between the back porch and the shed was ideal if you didn’t want to be seen. My aunts and several of my cousins would lie back there in their bikinis and get tans. That way they didn’t have to worry about prying eyes. Knowing this, the two young men chose this as the place where they’d smoke their funny looking cigarette.

When we reached the area between the two buildings, Donald placed the “doob,” as they called it, between his thumb and pointing finger. He put it in his mouth and then brought out his Zippo. With three flicks of his wrist he had opened the top of the lighter, fired up the thing and had brought the flame to the tip of the cigarette. As the joint ignited, I heard a crackling sound and then a small pop. “I must’ve left a seed in that one,” stated Donald as he blew out the smoke from his lungs.

“That’s all right,” returned my uncle. “I’ll hit her anyway.”

Donald took another drag off of the cigarette and passed it to Delano. My uncle grasped the thing the same way as Donald, but he looked strange doing it whereas his friend looked perfectly natural doing it. Delano’s fingers were short and stumpy like most of my family. Whereas the cigarette looked normal in Donald’s hands, they made Delano’s look deformed by comparison. I remember laughing because it looked like my uncle was some broken down fairy tale dwarf that was trying to give me the okay sign with his fingers.

“That thing stinks,” I stated as I waved my hand in front of my nose.

“Smells like Heaven to me.” Delano smiled at me and then took another hit off of it.

“Heaven will smell like a willing woman,” piped Donald.

“Don’t talk about Heaven.” I was getting nervous about the situation. I didn’t know what they were doing, but I knew it couldn’t be right or else they wouldn’t be hiding back here where no one could see them. “Mommy says that’ll get you in trouble. Talking about the Lord, I mean.”

“You want to talk about the Lard?” asked Donald. He was mimicking a preacher when he said that. “If you want to talk about the lard, then I’ll tell you about the lard, huh.” He then put his hand over his mouth and began prancing around like the Old Time Baptist preachers do when they are giving a sermon.

“I know all about the lard, huh!” he continued. “I have met the Lard, huh, and he is good. Once the Lard gets into your system, then peace will follow, huh!”

“Preach on brother!” shouted Delano. I glanced at my uncle and saw him prancing around like a crazy man. “Tell it like it is. Lord help him to preach the word!”

“Stopped it!” I screamed. I was petrified by what they were doing. God was going to strike them down like those sinners in the time of Moses.

Donald pointed straight at me and continued to preach. “Silence, you sinner! Don’t ever interrupt a man when he’s preaching about the lard.”

Taking his friend’s lead, Delano pointed at me and shouted, “Blasphemer, Hell is too good a place for the likes of you.” With that, he fell on the ground and began to jerk around as though he was having an epileptic fit.

As Delano was flailing around like a man taken leave of his senses, Donald ran over to my uncle called for the demons to exit his body. “Come out of there you spawn of Hell. We will not allow you to possess this child of our Lard!” Delano began to jerk even more wildly for a few seconds and then went deathly still.

Donald bent over him and put the cigarette into my uncle’s mouth. “Take this. Draw the lard into your lungs. Let him into your being. Feeeel the comfort that he brings.”

Delano took an exaggerated drag off of the joint and began shaking and praising the lord. That was all I could take. I began to run towards a large culvert located near grandma’s house. Once I reached it, I crawled inside as fast as I could. I sat there trembling like a frightened puppy. I was expecting lightening from Heaven to strike these two down and I didn’t want to be around when it happened. I was hoping that were I hidden in the open drain, God would not see me and thus would not strike me dead as well.

“Where you going?” It was Donald. I was too busy running to answer him. “What’s eating him?”

“I don’t know,” returned my uncle. “He’s got his own way of thinking. Could be anything for all I know.”

They spent the next few minutes preaching and taking hits off of the cigarette. When they got to the end of it, they sat on the picnic table located at the far end of the backyard and near the culvert where I was hiding. They were less than sixty feet away and I could hear everything they said. Over the next few minutes, they remained silent accept for various outbursts of laughter. One would look at the other and begin cackling like a lunatic and, soon, the other would join in with him. After a few seconds, this would die down only to be revised a few seconds later. This went own for about half an hour before they quit.

Once they quit sniggering like drunken fools, Donald began to speak. “You know there’s nothing like a good doob.” He paused for a second and then continued. “A good burger or a bad woman might give her a run for her money, but a good joint is hard to beat.”

“I’ll take a bad woman over a good joint any day of the week,” injected my uncle.

“Yeah me too,” agreed Donald and then he stopped and changed the direction of the conversation. “You ever wonder about a woodpecker?”

“You see one?” asked Delano.

“No, not really. I was just wondering about a woodpecker. How come they don’t get brain damage from all that beating and pecking?”

“Please, tell me you’re kidding.”

“Why would I kid about a stupid bird? I think about stuff like that. Aren’t you even curious about stuff like that?”

“Look,” said Delano. I could hear the serious tone in his voice. “All I care about is having a good time and getting through college. We’ve finished up junior college and’ll be starting UK this fall. If I can’t drink it, eat it, toke it, shoot it at a backboard or rub bellies with it, then I could careless about it. And I could care even less about a stupid woodpecker!”

“Whatch you all riled up for? I was curious about a bird that’s all.”

“Would you forget about that thing? I’m hungry. You?”

“Now, that you mention it, I could go for a burger at that.”

“Good, you drag the grill over here and fire it up and I’ll go slap some meat together and we’ll throw them on that thing.”

My uncle began making his way to the back porch. About the time he got to the first step, he turned and shouted back to his friend. “You want some tater chips?”

“Yep, what kind you got?”

“Barbeque, plain and green onion, I believe.”

“Plain, no wait, green onion; I really don’t care. I’d like to have some french fries, but I’ll take chips. What about little britches?”

“I’ll take care of him. He likes cheeseburgers and plain tater chips.”

“You got any pop in there?” asked Donald. “If you do, bring me an RC or a Pepsi.”

“Gotcha,” said my uncle has he raised up his thumb. “You want any toppings?”

“Bring ‘em all.”

Delano hadn’t been in the house a couple of minutes when he came out the back door carrying a large stereo speaker under each arm. He set them on the porch so that they faced the picnic area. He then went back into the house. Within a few seconds, the song Smiling Faces began to blast across the yard. It was followed up by the Coca Cola, theme song I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.

I had moved from the center of the culvert to the edge of it so that I could get a better look at the two of them. Over the last few minutes they acted like a couple of drunken fools even though I knew for a fact that they hadn’t touched a drop of booze that whole day.

I began to laugh as I watched Donald dancing around the grill. His body swayed to the music as the flames roared higher. He looked like an evil witch doctor from an old Tarzan movie. I began to laugh as I watched this future engineer shake his hips like a hula dancer. To see him act all silly like that, you never would have known that he carried a genius level IQ in his head.

After the flames died down, Donald began poking a stick into the charcoal. I assumed that he was spreading the briquettes like my father did when he barbequed. About that time he tossed the stick, Delano exited the back door carrying a platter in each hand. He walked over to the picnic table and placed one of the plates on it and handed the other to his friend who began to drop the hand-patted meat on the grill.

Within a few minutes, the aroma of that sizzling delight reached my nose. I began to lick my lips. I tried to stop, but the scent of that meat was overpowering. Without even realizing it, I began to wipe my mouth. I must have looked like a southern preacher pouring out a sermon because I was raking my lips four or five times a minute.

Part of me, the greedy sinful part, I thought, wanted to go over and ask for a cheeseburger, but the sensible part was not going to allow that to happen. I was convinced that this was some kind of trick that God was using to get me over there next to them so that He could take all three of us out with only one lightening bolt and I was not about to give Him that chance. I had heard from one of my friends that God was only allowed to use one strike per day. Therefore, I was determined not to get near my uncle and his friend. This, I assumed, would decrease the odds of my getting hit by some stray fragment. I made up my mind that I was going to stay in that culvert until grandma got home.

Once the burgers began to cook, Delano made his way back into the house. He was in there only a few minutes before he returned to the grill. He was carrying a roll of paper towels, three large bags of chips and a pack of buns when he came back.

“I called the girls and they’ll be here directly,” he said. “They’re going to stop and get a six pack of beer.”

Donald was nodding his head as he flipped the meat. “You tell them that we had some weed?”

“Yep, but Sherry doesn’t like it. She prefers alcohol to pot.”

“Janice’ll smoke her as long as you got her.” The blond shook his head. “That girl is something else. Were I wanting to get married, I’d…”

“Whoa, are you crazy? These girls ain’t the marrying kind. They’ve been with every man on the creek. You want to marry a slut like that?”

“Don’t call Janice a slut!”

“What am I supposed to call her? She ain’t no saint! You cuckolded Deanie to get her. Are you forgetting what these two did on our first night together?”

“No.”

“You want a wife like that? No, you don’t! A wife is supposed to be like our mothers. They’re supposed to be good and pure; the exact opposite of these two. These girls have their purposes, but marriage ain’t it. These girls are just like us. They’re in it for a good time and nothing else. If you think she’ll not drop you for a better deal, you’re crazier than a loon.”

“All I was saying is that she can do things to you that you never even dreamed of.”

“Enjoy it. If she’s willing to degrade herself that low, let her. Ride this pony for all it’s worth, but don’t you dare fall in love with her. These girls are good for one thing and one thing only and that’s…”

I catch the last word he said.

“You’re right,” agreed Donald. “But, what about us? Aren’t we playing the hypocrite? Sure, we want our wives to be good girls, but we only run around with the bad.”

“That’s what a man does; been that way since Adam and Eve. I once read that Adam had a woman named Lilith before he had Eve. She was supposed to be a bad girl. If he can do it, then why can’t we?”

“You don’t believe that hogwash do you?” I could hear the caution in Donald’s voice.

They both began to laugh. “Not really, but is makes a good story.”

I was sitting there contemplating what I was going to do next when a purplish AMC Javelin pulled up into the yard. I looked to see who it was even though I knew it was the two girls they were expecting.

The car rolled to a stop and out stepped two of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. The girl on the passenger’s side had long flowing naturally curled auburn hair. She looked like Raquel Welch and my heart skipped a beat as I looked upon her. Her companion was a blonde girl that parted her hair in the middle. This one reminded me of Sandra Dee. Both were tanned and fit. Each wore a halter top, cut off jeans and flip-flops, but the thing that really set them off were their oversized Foster Grant sunglasses. They wore them like weapons. As I looked upon them, I feared that a single glance from either of them would slice me into two halves.

The brunette carried a twelve pack of Miller Beer with her as she sashayed towards the men. “You boys thirsty,” she asked and even at that tender age I could hear the seduction in her voice.

“Always,” returned Donald, but I could make out a hint of fear in his voice. That shocked me. Janice was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid my eyes upon and she was his. Were I in his shoes, I’d be shouting for joy, but he seemed afraid of her.

“You girls hungry?” asked my uncle.

“Uh huh,” cooed the blonde. I could see my uncle’s face light up when she spoke.

“We’ve got some burgers on the girl and some chips.” My uncle motioned towards the picnic table as he spoke. “If you want, we also have some pop in the refrigerator. I know you brought some beer, but just in case.”

“Now that you’ve mentioned it,” stated the angelic looking brunette. “I’d like to have a Pepsi if it is not too much trouble?”

My uncle shook his head. “No trouble at all. How about you Sherry, wanna pop?”

“No, I’ll have a beer or two…”

“Or six,” interrupted her friend. I laughed even though I didn’t understand the joke.

As my uncle made his way towards the house, he stopped, turned to face me and shouted towards me. “Randy, you want something to drink?”

I hesitated before I spoke. “Can I have a cheeseburger too?”

That patented grin of his swept across my uncle’s face and he looked like a Hollywood movie star at that moment. “All ready done,” he shouted. “What do you want on it, same as usual?”

“Yep.” My mouth was beginning to water as I thought about that burger.

As Delano stepped upon the porch, he shouted back to his companions. “Donnie, slap some mustard, lettuce and tomato on one of them burgers. Put some plain chips in a plate too. I’d say little man is hungry.”

“Who’s Randy,” asked the Sandra Dee look alike.

“Del’s nephew,” answered Donald.

Janice began nodding her head and then spoke. “I believe I know him. He’s the blond isn’t he?”

“Yep,” replied her boyfriend.

The brunette’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. She clapped her hands together and a white toothy grin engulfed her face. “Sherry, you’ve got to see him. He’s gorgeous.”

“He’s ten!” barked Donnie.

“He’s still cute as a button. I bet when he’s our age the girls’ll knock you down to get to him. I wouldn’t mind having a shot at him when he’s eighteen.”

“You’re such a tramp,” injected the blonde.

“Amen!” shouted Donnie.

Janice threw her hands up and laughed. “All I’m saying is that boy’s going to be gorgeous and ten years ain’t that big of an age difference and you know it. My dad is eleven years older than mommy.”

“But he’s the man,” piped Donnie. “It’s okay for him to have a younger wife.”

“And it’s not okay for a woman to have a younger man?” asked Sherry.

“Times are changing,” said the brunette as she frowned at her boyfriend. “I suggest you get with the times.”

The three were silent for a few minutes after that, but even from my distance I could feel the tension floating around the picnic table. It hung there like the smoke brisling from the grill. It was broken only by the return of my uncle.

Delano stopped at the picnic table only long enough to pop the cap off of that “10, 2, 4” bottle and to pick up my plate. He then made his way over to where I was sitting. As he approached the culvert, he began to speak. “Randy, what in the world are you doing under this culvert? You could get eat up by snakes. Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yep, but not of snakes. I’m afraid of God.”

“God!” He looked at me as though I had just swallowed one of those snakes he had been talking about. “What’s God got to do with you being in this thing?”

“I-I-I was afraid that He’d zap you with lightning and I didn’t want to be killed by it. I didn’t want Him thinking that I was making fun of him like you and Donnie were doing.”

He began to laugh. It wasn’t a hard laugh, but one born out of understanding. I smiled despite myself when I saw him.

“We weren’t making fun of God. We’d never do that. We were making fun of the preachers and not God.”

“What’s the difference?”

He thought about it before he spoke. “God isn’t a phony hypocrite like most of the preachers are.” He looked into my eyes and I could see a gentle fatherly side that I had never seen in him before. “God loves you, Randy. And He loves me, Donnie and those girls over there. He loves us enough to send Jesus to die for us.

“He knows each us. He knows our sins and our good deeds. He sees and knows everything and that includes your innards. He knows if you love Him or not. He knows if you are making fun of Him and believe me, He won’t allow that to happen. You believe that?”

I shook my head to indicate that I did. “Is that why you aren’t dead?”

“I reckon He knows we weren’t meaning any harm and has decided that He’d let us live at least one more day.

“Now, you can stay here if you want to, but I’m going over to the table and have myself some lunch. You’re welcome to come with me, but I won’t force you to go. Just promise me you’ll look out for snakes and I’ll leave you alone; deal?”

He left the soda and burger in front of me and made his way towards the picnic table. He hadn’t gone ten feet before I called for him.

“Del, do you think those girls’ll mind if I come along with you.”

“Lord, no. Besides, I think Janice has a thing for you. I know Donnie’s jealous of you over her.”

I was beaming when he said that. I felt as though I could walk on air. I had never thought that much of girls, but every time I got near Janice my stomach felt as though it had worms crawling around inside it. My body would shake and I would dream of what it would be like to kiss her.

As we approached the others, Janice spoke. “Didn’t I tell you that he was a cutie?”

“That you did,” responded the blonde. “And you weren’t lying. He’s as cute as a puppy dog.” I blushed at that statement.

Noticing my beet-red face, the brunette began to make a fuss over me. “No need to be embarrassed, Randy. You’re a handsome boy and I’ll bet the girls are crazy over you at school.”

“I’m only ten-years-old,” I shot back.

“But gorgeous enough to be twenty,” stated Janice. “If I wouldn’t dating Donnie, I’d be all over you.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” injected my uncle’s best friend.

I could hear the anger in his voice. Apparently, Janice did as well, because she responded in kind. “If I wanted to kiss him, you couldn’t stop me,” she shouted at her boy friend.

The two began to argue over his statement. I don’t recall that much about it because I was hoping and silently praying that Janice would kiss me. I had never been kissed before and was curious about it, but given the fact that my first kiss was about to come from a girl on whom I had a huge crush only added to the excitement of the situation.

Somewhere during their argument, Janice grabbed my head and pulled me towards her. She then placed a small but tender kiss on my lips. It meant nothing to her, but my head nearly blew off my shoulders as my body drank in the deliciousness that was her touch. I remember seeing her smile and hearing my uncle laugh but other than that, I don’t remember much more. I spent the rest of the day dreaming about being Janice’s boyfriend.

The next time I would see Janice would be around Thanksgiving of that year. She would stop in with Sherry and see my grandmother. She wasn’t this movie star goddess that I remembered. She was swollen and haggard looking. She was pregnant and carrying one of the more than twenty-five children Donnie was rumored to have fathered during his lifetime.

He dumped her and swore that the child wasn’t his. He began to spread lies about her and claimed that he would support the child if it could be proven to be his, but he stated that he’d never marry the village tramp.

Three years later as the nation was celebrating our bicentennial, Donnie would impregnate my aunt. This would cause a rift between him and Delano that would never heal. In 1993, on his fortieth birthday, Donnie would put a pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger.

Even though they hadn’t spoken in over fifteen years, Delano cried like a wounded kitten when he heard the news. He then rushed to see Donnie’s parents. While there, Amber, Donnie’s mom, gave Del a letter that Donnie had left for him.

All I can tell you about the letter is that it changed my uncle forever. Prior to receiving that letter, Delano hadn’t been much of a man. He had been married three times having been divorced twice due to his constant infidelities. He was a liar, drunkard and well known, but not well-liked.

After the letter, he became a totally different man. He publicly made amends to his first two wives and set on a course that changed his life. Today, he is a state senator and there is talk of him being a future governor or senator. With his looks, personality and charm, I don’t doubt that he’ll do it and unlike his past, he’ll do it the right way this time around.