A Father's Son

The days past were blessed with irreverence when the nights failed to bless me.  I am called Paul because one night I was chosen to be given such a name.  Now, however, I find myself in the back seat of a car gazing out the window toward the dribbling rain and the quietness of life.  I close my eyes. 

The black four door Buick steamed down an isolated dirt road surrounded by an untold number of trees resembling monumental grave markers.  The trees held close to one another as we passed by.  Scenes of remote mountains became blurred by the car’s increasing motion to continue onward.  Only the tormented shapes of solid black clouds high above remained greater than the snow covered mountain tops in the distant wilderness.  The shadowy clouds scorched higher as though they were smoke pouring up and away from a burning house lost somewhere in the immense forest. 

The day was nearing evening, and leaving a blur of shadows against the ground.  I could not see any buildings nor any other cars passing by with their standard roars.  Behind the car a cloud of dust quickly became a tail of concealment which hid everything that laid behind.  I’m sure the only thing behind us was the past.  

The wilderness seemed to open up.  It was like it was trying to swallow the car as the wheels moved the vehicle deeper into Nature’s fanged mouth.  A chaos where man was the outsider; man excluded from a world created specifically for him. 

I remember thinking how beautiful the world’s creations could be until my body ached.  The pain coursed through my veins.  It caused memories to be unleashed.  Thoughts I thought I had forsaken.  Images I thought I could run away from.  I was not alone in the car.  I was being driven to only God knew where.  In the thriving impulses of pain I barely recalled how I came to be in that unwanted situation.

I had been on the street for nearly six months.  I lived my own way, my own life, and faced my own problems.  It was dark except for the twilight which seeped through one broken window in my home.  The night air was dark and cool as the breeze of midnight came in periodically. 

My home was a wooden shed.  As if anyone could call that place a home.  Yet, it was home to me for a little over five months.  It protected me and secured me from the outside weather for a few moments to rest.  It laid behind an old man’s house where it stood erect about eight feet and reached close to four feet wide.  It was abandoned just like me. 

The old man hardly ever came out of his house.  If he did it was to feed the birds or to sit on his back porch to write.  Even then this would be after lunch.  By then I was a ghost only to haunt the dwellings of the shack late at night. 

I came upon the old man, one day, when I strolled down the alley behind the back yard.  I stopped and watched the old man as he wept softly.  He spoke to himself in several sobbing mumbles.  He was sitting on the back porch on a swing made for two people.  Two wrinkled hands covered his bent head and his feet were firmly planted in the boards of the porch.  He wore faded blue overalls and a brown flannel shirt underneath.  Two black boots were worn in and were becoming faded on his feet.  Several holes occupied the old man’s boots.  No fear passed my thoughts as I leapt the fence and started towards the gnarled old man. 

It was quiet out.  Still, he did not hear me until I stood on the steps of that old wooden porch.  Even then he did not lift his head.  He probably built the porch with his own two hands when he was young and full of vigor and life’s wrinkle still waited for him. 

He just sat there with his face covered by his archaic hands aged by hardships that were still unknown to me.  While the birds sang and the clouds slowly walked by in a moment of a moments pause he seemed to know who I was, a backyard companion.  However, he made no notion in speech.  So I stood there wanting to comfort him.  I wanted to tell this stranger that it would be all right. 

That was when I first realized I had only been a lost boy in the world.  I had not yet faced the difficulties of life or nor imagined such.  I spoke to the old man, interrupting his mourning out of curiosity.

“Old man?” I asked bravely breaking the sorrowful silence.  “Why are you crying?” 

His hands slowly fell from his face revealing brown eyes that burned for pity as he began to wipe away the tears.  He replied with only two words and departed into his house.  A voice strong and probably capable of leading great armies into battle spoke with a brokenness I had never witnessed before. His voice still echoes within me.