The return of the father

I twirled the chain of my fathers pocket watch in my fingers. I watched its shadow, created by the oil lamp resting on the nightstand behind my head, dance upon the wall of my bedroom. The floor had been cold when I had taken this position by the window, half an hour before, but now I felt numbed to the coolness of the wood beneath me. I was used to a certain level of numbness, and without enough money to pay for heating, had almost, in the last year, become used to the tiny bumps that formed on my legs and arms when I stepped out of bed in the morning.

Outside, the ebony of the sky lay, unpenetrated by light, the silence of the night unbroken. The country was asleep. I hadn't known a silence like this since we moved from London. I imagined that those who had stayed lived in fear, no lights on after blackout, huddled in bomb shelters in the witch's hour almost every night, knowing with certainty that every bomb that fell could have been hunting them. I lived like that for a few months, but we left before it truly got bad. I’ve seen photos of London recently in the newspaper. I hardly recognized my home. I guessed I was lucky. I got out. We sent our new address to father, but I wasn’t sure if he got the letter before everything. I wondered if I would ever see him again.

I stared at the ceiling, following the fingers of cracked paint from the left side to my dull, lifeless ceiling light. We didn't have enough money to fix that either. I had been living here for only 9 months, but already all the appeal that the house had held prior to my inhabitance had vanished, along with the money that father had left for us. Everything we owned had been sold, save for a few, worthless items. Mother had sold fathers suits, shoes and even his money clip at the market one Sunday, about 3 months ago, after receiving a telegram in the mail. Father was missing in action, suspected to be dead. I believe that the scraps we received for his worn out dress shoes were worthless, and that mother had an alternative motive for selling such items. She wanted to forget. Didn’t we all? The war had stolen from us everything but the ground beneath our feet, and this shell of a house we live in. Mother tried to forget by erasing fathers memory, but I could not forget. I liked to imagine that father did not go missing in action, rather that he ran. I wanted to believe that he enrolled in the army by choice, in order to leave his family. I wanted to believe that he chose to abandon us, by his own free will, and that while we held family dinners in the early days of the war, when he was silent he was not so because he imagined with great fear and animosity his eventual draft, but rather because he was planning his escape, plotting his departure and looking forward to his disappearance. It's easier to hate a living person than grieve a lost loved one. It's easier to hate someone who left you, than hate the country that forced him to leave.

I looked down at the pocket watch again. I ran my fingers over the smooth surface. The last piece of my father. The only thing that wasn't sold. A few months ago, mother searched every room in the house for that watch, but I guess after some time she just assumed that it was lost forever. I looked at it fondly. A piece of my father unknown by the world. A piece specifically reserved for me. The watch slipped through my fingers, creating a resounding, hollow thud as it hit the floor. I waited tentatively. Mother was asleep next door. If she had known I hadn't been sleeping again she would have taken me back to the doctor. In truth, the doctor couldn't change anything. I didn't sleep because despite my efforts to become angry at my father, I still felt the emptiness of a home he had never set foot into, seeping under doorframes and haunting the walls like a ghost. He was gone. Only time could change how I felt about it. The main reason I didn't sleep, however, was because part of me felt that maybe he wasn't gone at all. Maybe he was coming home tonight. Even such a small chance excited me, and did not permit my brian to rest until overcome with extreme fatigue. Thus, 3 months ago, I became an insomniac. I sat by my window every night, watching the road, praying that I would see a familiar man in uniform walking home.

Footsteps. Mother was awake. I leapt off of my floor and into bed, stashing the pocket watch under my pillow, and I blew furiously at my lamp. I yanked my threadbare blanket over my body in time for my door to crack open. I pretended to be asleep, and apparently my act sufficed. At risk of waking me up by closing the door too loud, mother left my door open before returning to the solitude of her room. I crawled out of bed after hearing her door close. I took my place by the window once again. It had been 3 days since I’d slept this time. By far my worst record. My body, however, gave no indication that tonight would be any different than the last 3.

I stared out the window. The world was still. If I was completely quiet I could almost hear the distant hum of fighter planes over London. The city was not asleep, but way out here, far from all the action, it seemed that no one was still awake. I concentrated on the path leading up to my house. The trees blew softly with Spring time wind. Each night, the darkness became shorter, and the Spring winds brought hope and held the promise of an end to the chaos that consumed our lives. Armistice had seemed impossible, but Spring brought a promise of a new beginning, and had made an end seem somewhat more possible.

Today I'm certain that I sat there for hours before I saw a man materialize about a quarter of a mile from my house, because by the time he appeared, the sun was starting to come up, but back then it had felt like minutes. I hardly noticed him at first; my hallucinations due to sleep deprivation had become so frequent that I doubted he was even real. I sat there for a long time, watching the figure become fractionally larger with each step nearer. With each tiny growth my heart quickened. Usually the hallucinations lasted only a few minutes. I expected the man to vanish but he continued walking, and I allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy that maybe, just maybe I was seeing what I had prayed to see for months. The man’s walk seemed familiar. He stepped with an awkward weight imbalance, the same unequal distribution that had been flagged in the first round of the draft, and almost prevented him from being sent to the front lines. That was before the precautions were relaxed and the doctors discovered my fathers well kept secret; the way he walked did not prevent him from running, stable and even faster than many men. I watched the man get closer, and now I was able to make out his other features. He wore a military uniform, at least I assumed based upon the rigid, bulky way his clothes hung off of his body. His hair was long, sitting in a tangled heap upon his head, and one arm hung listlessly at his side. In one hand he clutched a piece of paper. The other arm was held firmly in a white cast and slung across his chest. He was now approaching the house.

I grabbed the pocket watch from under my pillow. “Keep this for me until my return, darling” I remembered him saying almost a year ago when he had pressed it firmly into my palm. I remembered watching a tear fall upon the metal before he had closed my fingers and lifted my chin gently. “Don’t cry. We can't stop what’s happening. Neither of us knows what will happen, but time continues passing without our consent. Whatever happens, remember to cherish each second that I am here, and each that I am away. We will see each other sooner than you think.”

I left my room, no longer worrying about the noise I made. As I started down the stairs, I choked out the words “fathers home” over my shoulder, barely above a whisper. I reached the bottom and flung open the door, letting it hit the wall on its path, chipping the paint. There he was. His shoulders hung wearily, his deep seaweed green eyes glittering with the rising sun. His hand was raised as though he were about to knock, but upon seeing me he dropped it quickly. We stood there, staring at each other, until tentatively, he reached his arm, still clutching a piece of paper and hugged me gently, as though we were strangers. My hostility, my animosity, my feigned anger disappeared, now as insignificant as a budding poppy in a field. I dug my hands into his coat, clawing for something tangible, something to tell me that he was real. He tousled my hair gently, and squeezed slightly harder. I pulled away gently, my eyes blurry with tears. My father was home.

I remembered the pocket watch and handed it to him with slightly shaky hands, but he pushed it away softly and whispered, “That’s yours.” He handed me the piece of paper he held, and through my blurry vision I saw my own handwriting. It was the last letter that mother and I had sent him. I handed it back to him, and whispered, “That’s yours”, but this time he did not smile, and instead pushed it back towards me and whispered, “I’m sorry.” I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my nightgown, "I'm sorry?”, “why?” I asked. Before he could answer, I heard mothers footsteps. The fabric of her nightgown billowed behind her as she ran, and when she saw me, she began to cry. She crumbled into a heap at the bottom of the stairs, as tears streamed from her face. I turned back to my father, but the man standing before me was no longer anyone familiar to me.

The man before me was at least 3 inches taller than my father, with deep brown eyes and a neat buzz cut. He wore a uniform, yes, but was easily two sizes larger than my father, and had large, strong hands whereas my father had always had unusually small hands, which were only a little longer than my own. I looked down at my hands. I was not holding the letter that mother and I had sent to father, but I was holding a thick yellow rectangle. A telegram. I looked past the man. A black car was parked on the road, and from it two men were unloading a box. Not a box, a coffin. I turned away and looked at the man. My voice trembled as I asked, “where?”. The man swallowed. “I’m sorry” he whispered. As he walked away, the two men with the coffin approached. “Where should we place it?” one asked me. I never answered him. The men drove away around 7:30 that morning, and two days later, I saw my father for the last time as we lowered him into the ground. Perhaps I was like my mother. I buried the pocketwatch with him. I didn't want any piece of him anymore. I just wanted to forget. After the funeral, I scrubbed the floor in the living room, where he had been placed for those two days, until the wood was warped and the color of it gone. I slept fine after I realized that he would never come home again.

5 years later, after the war was over, I learned that my father had been killed by the same man who came to our door. Father was killed for cowardice after running during a German aerial invasion. Father was marched into the woods, blindfolded and ordered to be shot by his comrade for running in the face of death. I wonder what his last thought was. I wonder why he ran. Father the great, the provider for his family, the kind lawyer, a real gentleman, killed by those he befriended. Killed by the country he had loved for his whole life. Ripped apart by a British bullet. What a dishonorable and undeserving death for an honorable man. What an insult to his good nature.

Father, why did you run?