I could kill him. Right now, nothing on earth was in my way from accomplishing that one thing I have drawn breath for each day. For eight years I have dreamed of staring into his eyes as his life was crushed from him. That hate alone carried me forward every day. “What the Hell are you talking about.” It was not a question, my revolver made that perfectly clear.
“Please! Chase, please! I can tell you… I have been consoling that shell of a man all these years, as God’s witness I can tell you this is a mistake! His mind has been tormented, unrelenting torment!”
“I’m not here to reconcile. His torment was from the guilt of what he did to my mother!”
“You must please sit down, I do understand the way things appear…”
“They appear as they are! I SAW my mother begging in tears for him to stop harassing her! I will not be stopped. One last time, step aside.”
“Is it just possible, if you think clearly for a moment, that you saw a reaction…” he clambered for some memory, “Think back on the simple problem of your birthday gift, when I recall, you were possibly 15… no no, I recall, your 14th birthday!” He drew a nervous smile and pressed out a cautious laugh. “Yes! Nothing at all came for you that year,” he added with a frown. “You were despondent. You sulked in your room the whole night! Of course your mother had said that she reminded your father of the event, and that she tried to get him to participate in that special day, however, she said he simply would not remember you.”
I had forgotten about that. He’s trying to trick me, I am sure. “She didn’t hide that gift! Yes, I did find the emblazoned Bible in the trash. He was so careless to use an old wine box for shipping, Robert received it and before he could tell her it arrived she thought it was from our cellar and took it to the garbage. A simple mistake anyone could make!”
“Chase, I am sorry. That parcel was received by your mother, not by Robert. Oliver had asked me personally for a fitting gift for your fourteenth birthday. I am the one… I, who you point that weapon at this moment, was the one who recommended that gift to him. He donated a substantial sum to the church to have it. The package… well, it was what we had available, and thought nothing of it. Chase, I came to your home after service, and I placed that gift into her hands for you. God be my witness, I told her it was from your father.”
“Lies! What do you serve to gain in this ploy! You say what you need to save a life now, maybe even your own! Nothing more!” I barked.
“Exactly nothing, son. I gain nothing.” he said somberly. “I had the aid of someone, as it was a busy time – Christmas approaching and all. I asked Topclock to prepare the package and the Bible for your father. Who else indeed could be so inventive to emblazon the cover of that book so elegantly? Have I got a printing machine in the church, Chase? Listen for a moment please, to what I have also heard. Make your decision from the complete set of circumstances. Oliver truly has been trying to be a father to you, against the risk of enormous personal peril. Events such as what I have told you now, were unending. The carousel of events and memories never ended in his head – never a rest or respite, whirling in a chaotic circus of haunting amputated pleasures – the missed opportunities – and uninvited inclusions of trauma. A maelstrom carnival exhibit encompassed him.” Father Landra replied. His eyes sunk to the marble floor as if seeing in those chaotic veins a reflection of his predicament.
“What trauma?” I demanded incredulously.
“Oh! Oh Chase, it never abated! The collections on debts he never owed. The arrests for crimes he never committed. The foreclosure of his estate, the forgery of a writ in his name, and the theft of his most beloved son, you. Chase, the loss of YOU in his life!”
This was the last straw. “He lost his child when he decided to abuse and torment his child’s mother! You mock me at your own peril, gullible old fool. He is guilty of all his charges. I have no sympathy for the devil!”
“Please hear me out, I have something… something he had confided with me many years ago. I think it will answer many questions, but you must be prepared. Son, you must please understand, that it is not easy for any in your situation to bear what I am compelled now to share, but, I must trust you to do the right thing, and I must not allow you to go down this path without understanding. You should not have to bear it… no soul should. Oh! Please, I am sorry!”
“Understand what?” I glowered at the priest. He turned to lift the cloth on a small table in the dais. A drawer opened to reveal an aged envelope full of documents. It bulged with forms, letters, and what appeared to be legal letterhead documents, of such a bulk that he required two hands to grip it’s sides.
“Your father…”
“Oliver!” I corrected him. “The title ‘father’ is already taken. So is ‘pops,’ and ‘dad.’ By the only man who gave me anything growing up!”
“Oliver was left clinging by a thread to the grotesque carrousel caricature upon which he was mounted… upon which his reality is supported, preventing a tumultuous ejection from the things he can touch and see and feel and believe in. He was certainly struggling with good judgement, as anything he would do would be criticized. No course at all was safe for him. But the spinning. So wildly is he whipped through emotions and thought and reason, it is all he can do to keep from letting go.” The priest’s eyes began to tear, and in a quiver he continued, “Would that be such a horrible thing? It seems in that circumstance this was a relative question. If he simply let loose his grip and plow headlong into the jagged framework of this nightmare machine, should he survive or not, the chances are that the trauma would come to a close. Chase! Your fa… Oliver came this close to letting go! His body would lay collapsed on the ground or entangled in steel or a tree. But he would be at rest. Yes, it is certain that he would be not moving. It seems to be a very predictable outcome to him. How long has it been since he has known anything predictable? How long since he has taken action and caused something to happen in a way that is sure and known and logical? To take a job and know it won’t be ripped away by a nefarious letter to his employer warning and alleging of so heinous things which even you yourself knew him to be incapable and innocent of? To even serve in this sanctuary with the children, as he so pasionately desired, and not have me myself question his trustworthiness near the children oh GOD I did not trust him for what I was told! Curse my overcautious management which suffered this infraction against God’s will! Had I only opened up my ears and eyes, to see the struggles he endured. He said he was on the cusp. How tempting it is, I understand it is so tempting in times of great strife and separation from the controls to one’s own destiny, to just for a brief moment, taste reality one more time. Just let go of it all. Let the maniacal ride win. Forget that he is a father, a son, a servant, a husband, an employee. Forget everyone. Ignore everyone. Listen to no one. Be no one. That is what the ride commanded him to be.” His features sunk to a depth of low I had never seen in a man in my life. The pain he conveyed seemed absorbed into himself. “Chase. That is what your mother commanded him to be.”
It was not the first time I had heard it, I gave no substance to the charge as usual. But the man of faith before me, desponded me in his entrapment; such disappointing a display of judgement from a man I did truly respect. I reached out and took the envelope. Father Landra tugged one document on top of the stack and drew it out. He turned it round, and placed it on top of the envelope for me to read. It was a letter, from my mother. I took it in my fingers, and began reading. I read the writing, and knew it well to be the hand of my dearest mother. But the strange words – the sentences. Alien, unthinkable things being said. My reality began in overdrive to dismantle the offending words, which could not possibly have been written by the mother who … Then I saw it. I saw the very thing that made me hate Oliver more than anything on earth, I saw written in front of me a detailed scheme. A plot. This was no mistake, though I tried oh so hard to make it so. Was it a forgery? From the person I knew him to be… or until this point, for so many years, was convicted in believing him to be, that was certainly possible. But … Topclock? No, He didn’t know about Topclock? She clearly engaged this most noble of creatures, convicting him in her own hand before me. There was only one thing left to do. Only one man could unravel the truth, and determine if my whole childhood was a lie, and I was nothing more than a weapon for petty jealousy against a loving and kind man. One man could prove all my childhood to be a fiction and an unfillable hole in my reality, and I did not want at all to do what I absolutely must do now.
I achieved my goal in finding Top Clock and now I was faced with the unique challenge of communicating my predicament in an effectual way. The challenge I refer to is manifest in the form of his dog, who was fairly insistent on remaining the focus of all communication. Top Clock was splayed upon a cushioned chair with padded arms of dark red leather, his right leg over the arm, his left arm forming a pillar supporting his head from the other chair arm whereupon his elbow had formed the base; his hand the capital. To the left of his chair was a small circular pillowed rug bearing an elaborate sign above it which read, BUDDY. I assumed this was a bed for and the name of the dog which was now pestering me. I failed to enter the room humbly or with pleading, as was my intention. Buddy was following my steps brandishing a tennis ball, with which he nudged my shins incessantly. His feather-duster tail, being dressed with white hair that reached to the floor, vociferously beckoned for attention.
“Good afternoon Mr. Clock.” Said I. This was the first time I had considered how to address him, realizing now that it was a mistake to have neglected some form of rehearsal, at least in my own head. I never even took an opportunity to find out his Christian name, his given name, or anything beyond the publicly assigned moniker he is invariably associated with. Why exactly I did not inquire before how to address him puzzles me now. “I’m sorry, actually, I don’t know exactly the proper way to address you. Could I know how you prefer to be addressed?”
“Buddy!” He exclaimed. Top Clock’s eyes had been traveling between myself and the ball-nudging dog during my botched entrance. He ultimately rested them on the dog as he said this, and the dog ceased rolling the ball on my leg, let out a whiney groan, offered me a brief last beckoning upward side-cocked glance, which I met with a look of anxious refusal, then trotted over to his master. “Yes!” he added conclusively.
At this I had to consider if my question had been answered, because nothing suggested more was to come. And at that I had to consider if I had in fact asked more then one question, because two answers may have been given if ‘Buddy’ had not only referred to his pet.. My consideration left me with the notion that his name was not likely ‘Buddy’ as his dog’s was, but I couldn’t be sure. I accepted this deduction in any case, and moved on to the second answer, ‘Yes,’ which I determined to be an answer to my question about my ability to know how to address him. He meant that I could know how he preferred to be addressed, and the only logical interpretation is that he did prefer to be called ‘Mr. Clock’ as I had just done. I began to wonder, is everything a puzzle with him, as a course of nature?
At this point Buddy had dropped to the floor, rolled over on his back at my feet with all four paws bent down at the wrists, and was writhing left and right with his mouth snapping and growling playfully. His tail was making a very clean section of floor. His red-orange ears fell back to the floor, their black tips splayed out above his head, and his eyelids fell slightly back revealing the whites giving him an uncanny resemblance to a bat at the angle presented to me. Top Clock threw the ball violently at the floor. Buddy twisted to his feet with equal violence, and four paws began flying across the floor much faster than the dog to which they were attached, much like the wheels of a train slipping on an unsanded rail upon starting up. As the dog picked up speed, his head followed the ricocheting ball throughout the chamber. It struck the floor, launched into a bank of levers, turned abruptly leftward and struck a pipe, then oscillated between two gauges before launching into a parabolic arch which left the ball headed for a dining table. Buddy had launched airborn, missed the ball on the floor rebound, fell on his side and twisted back to his feet, skidded into a chair, used said chair to launch himself toward the gauges, and lifted fully into the air to finally intercept the ball before it hit the table. Buddy landed on a copper vase with a crash, tumbled to the floor, snapped back to his feet, and drove his paws once again as fast as they could go toward me. His body caught up to his paws and just at my feet he locked all four paws before himself and slid to a stop, holding the ball up for me. He was panting wildly and growling playfully, tail signaling pure exhilaration.
“Go ahead, take it!” said Top Clock.
“I really want to…” I was knocked back by a flying dog kicking his fore paws to my thighs. The ball was in his mouth. Now he stood on his hind legs leaning on my thigh and presented it to me. “I really want to talk about…” The dog was a bat again.
This was hardly a profitable way to engage such a delicate conversation, yet it thus began.
Science Fiction