The Two Swords, Part 2

by Benedict Herrman

The Being vanished, the light in my room returned to normal, and as I glanced at my clock again, I blinked in disbelief — 2:13 AM. Not a minute had passed.

I stayed home the next morning claiming recovery time from the party and walked the few blocks to the park, and although I’d made the journey hundreds of times, I’d never taken the time to look at the faces of the people around me. Living in a city like New York can do that, I suppose — blur everyone into a composite, faceless mob hurrying to get somewhere before 9:00 am or streaming out of buildings, catching cabs or heading for the subways around 5:00 pm. The truth was, I’d stopped seeing them. Continually lost in my own thoughts, other people had become invisible — at best, objects to be dodged on crowded sidewalks as I made my way through them. Ashamed of my self-absorption, I sat quietly and sipped a coffee as a Japanese mother and her three small children walked by, the littlest one still strapped to her back. An elderly couple strolled by hand in hand, not saying a word but still clearly sharing life together, savoring the park, the day, and each other. The sadness of my own marriage and its ultimate, predictably painful demise visited me again as I watched them shuffle slowly and carefully towards the zoo. A father with his young daughter, not more than four years old, also were heading towards the zoo, she riding on her daddy’s shoulders with a red balloon tied to her wrist. I looked at all of them, and as they moved past me, I wondered about their lives, their needs, their dreams and their secrets. What odd, colorful figures lived curled tightly inside of them in places the ordinary eye cannot see? What did they carry from their parents, and their parents’ parents, generations back through time?

I quit my job the next morning, giving my editor the believable excuse that I wanted to devote my time to writing my next novel, but instead I took the $15,000 prize money and bought a used van, tossed a clean mattress, two pillows and a sleeping bag in the back with the sole and somewhat fuzzy intention of heading west. I didn’t know where I was going or why, but the urge to travel, to see more, to feel more and connect more became overwhelming. Two slices of pepperoni and sausage pizza sat in a box on the passenger seat as I pulled out into traffic and headed towards the George Washington Bridge. Folding one, I took a bite and headed uptown, feeling freer than I had for some time, with no real agenda other than stopping at my father’s boyhood home in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was a kind of homage to him, I suppose, after seeing his interior landscape and understanding the damage to his psyche the war did. The trip was less than 200 miles, so I’d be there before sundown, though I had no idea of what I was going to do once I got there. I got out of Manhattan and kept going until New Jersey became Pennsylvania at the Delaware Water Gap.

The afternoon was growing late and the shadows of farmers’ silver aluminum silos stretched longer across the countryside. I was still half an hour outside of Williamsport, but I wanted to stop driving for a bit, and a bare dirt patch beside the road near a bridge that crossed a small creek looked inviting. I pulled over, walked out on the bridge and gazed down into the water. Three fat trout were holding steady with the gentle current waiting for whatever food fate might wash their way. I watched them for a while, peacefully doing what they were created to do, and wondered what I was created to do. If it’s not being a journalist, I thought to myself, then what is it? And what am I supposed to do with this sword? The answer came back immediately.

“Do what is put in front of you,” the words echoed softly in my ears. I turned around quickly to see who had spoken, but no one was there.

“Are you here?” I asked, speaking to the empty air. “Who are you?” I asked, but my only answer was the quiet rippling of the creek under the bridge. I climbed back in my van and drove on, fearing I was losing control over my faculties, though I knew I wasn’t.

The sun was low in the sky as I pulled up to my father’s childhood home on Hawthorne Avenue, its aging red brick exterior exactly as I remembered it. I recalled visiting his mother there in my early years. She served us all fat orange slices of fresh, salted cantelope, orange juice ‘newly-squozed,’ as she called it, and Bisquick pancakes drowning in butter and maple syrup. My father used to tell me of his Depression-era dinners around the family table, where his severe, unemotional, Teutonic father never addressed him directly, but funneled all communication formally through his wife with such comments as, ‘I hear the boy made a good shot today.’ The pain of the grief and abandonment my father carried with him from such emotional distance played across his face as he related the incident, and somehow it only added to my own private despair.

In an instant, my grandfather’s pale white outline hovered before me, a translucent body suspended in space, but still palpably real. The sword appeared unbidden in my hand and I sliced the floating figure top to bottom, and as the two halves parted, an understanding of this ancestor flooded into me even before I could touch the small colored figures writhing within him. A difficult, loveless marriage with my grandmother embittered him, the horrible financial pressures of the Depression blunted his ambitions and his self-esteem, and not-so-subtle slights from the local community towards his German ancestry during WWI still bled within him long after the war was over. His early death from asthma almost came as a blessing but further cemented my father’s own sense of abandonment. I began to sense that the word ‘karma’ had real, substantive meaning.

Next, the figure of my grandmother appeared, and again the process repeated itself. The sword had barely moved in my hand before her traumatic history surged like a jolt of electricity through me. I never knew her well — she had a stroke when I was eight or nine and died alone drooling in her wheelchair in a ‘care home,’ or so I remembered. Her barely suppressed anger and distrust of men was the result of sexual abuse by some grubby, faceless visitor who rented a room for a few months from her family when she was only 12. The repeated rapes, always accompanied by terrible threats should she reveal them, kept her so bottled up within herself that self-expression became impossible. Even long after the bastard moved on to seek work elsewhere, she still imagined him returning and murdering her and her family, keeping a lifetime lid on her emotional freedom. The financial stresses of the Depression coupled with the constant misery she subjected my grandfather to sealed up whatever slim hope she had for happiness. This was the home my father escaped from when he went off to fight the Bosch.

Let me again say that these experiences and understanding that followed all happened within about tenth of a second. I cannot explain it.

I thought about knocking on the door and asking the owners if I could look around, but that felt too invasive in today’s paranoid world. Besides, I had a sense that my purpose in going there had been fulfilled, so I climbed back in the van and sat for a few minutes, unsure as to what I was to do next, if anything. Was this it? A momentary rendezvous with my father’s family ghosts? The Being’s instructions came back to me as I turned the key in the ignition… ‘do what is put in front of you.’ For lack of anything better, I drove back to the freeway entrance, deciding to head west for no particular reason other than I had already been east.

A sullen young blond kid carrying a backpack stood by the onramp, his thumb extended. For some reason I pulled over and he hopped in, mumbling a thanks. He couldn’t be more than 15 or 16, and I wondered if he was running away.

“Headed home?” I asked. “Where can I drop you?” He didn’t answer for a moment, but stared outside the window instead, holding back both fury and tears while his hand worked to cover an obvious bruise to his left eye. “Who was it?” I asked gently. He reluctantly lowered his hand, the deception no longer needed, but an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming.

“Stepdad,” he muttered eventually, barely raising his voice to an audible level. We drove in silence for a few miles. I had an impression of the sword cutting his figure open, and though I was driving and wasn’t consciously doing anything, somewhere within me the scenes behind his wound began to reveal themselves.

“What’s your name, son?” I asked. No answer this time. “Let me guess? Your stepfather had a few drinks, beat up on your Mom, you stepped in to defend her, got the shiner, and you ran out the door when your mother didn’t come to your aid.” The kid looked at me like I was an alien.

“How the fuck do you know that?” he said, wide-eyed. I shrugged, not really knowing how I knew.

“What are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?” I replied. “Old enough to want to fight back, not old enough to win?” The kid nodded and smirked.

“Something like that,” he answered, looking out the window again. “What am I supposed to do, just stand there and let him beat on her? He has a gun, too… I’m afraid that sometime he’ll…” The sentence went unfinished.

“Tell you what let’s do,” I replied. “We go to the police and report what happened. Anyone lays a hand on a spouse like that goes to jail. It’s called domestic abuse. Physical abuse of a minor gets tacked on; he’s definitely looking at time behind bars. You and your Mom move to another town, start over. Has he done this before?” The kid nodded.

“Yeah, but she never reports it,” the teenager answered. “Says it’s her fault. Everyone knows the real story, but no one does anything. He’s a fucking bastard.” Hate flashed in his eyes, the scenes replaying in his mind. I nodded and agreed. “I’m Mark,” he said finally, a bit of trust breaking through his shell.

“Dave… Dave Glauer,” I replied, and stuck my hand out. He shook it carefully, keeping his eyes on me. “You think the police will do anything?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but there are both federal and state laws against domestic abuse, Mark,” I replied. “If you don’t tell them, nothing will happen once again. If you do tell them, something could happen, and that’s defending your Mom better that trying to fight off a bully bigger than you.” He thought about it for a moment. “Use a bigger stick,” I said, smiling. Mark smiled back.

“Police station is downtown, next exit,” the kid said. “Stay there with me while I report this?” I nodded. We turned off the highway, found the station and went inside, and the battered lad told his story, assuring the police more than once that I wasn’t the abuser. The detective who took down the information shook my hand as I was about to leave.

“Gonna get this guy?” I asked. “Oh yeah,” he replied. “We knew he was a bastard, but no one would come forward and say anything. Now that Mark finally spoke up, we’ve got a case. Thanks for your help.”

“This guy… Mark mentioned he has a gun,” I said, and the detective’s hardened eyes widened a bit. “Maybe, when you pick him up — wait for the Mom to be at work?” He smiled ever so slightly and nodded.

“Thanks,” the boy said as I made my way to the door. I gave Mark my card. “See that number? Let me know how you’re doing,” I said. “Text me or leave a message on voice mail if I don’t answer. I want to know you’re okay.”

“Where are you headed?” he asked. “Nearby, or…” “Not sure,” I replied, smiling. “I’m either going somewhere for no reason or nowhere for some reason.” I left the station and found my way back to the highway and headed west again.

It was already dark and getting cold. Hungry, I headed in to a little roadside diner with a flickering neon sign with the command “Eat” next to a tire store that had seen better days, had a forgettable meal, then moved on. Just east of the Ohio border, I found an unlit parking lot next to a church, pulled in behind a ramshackle brick building, crawled into my sleeping bag and called it a night.

The next morning, I had a simple breakfast accompanied by truly bad coffee at the diner. A gray-haired woman in a ratty grey wool coat and burgundy-colored knit hat sat one stool away from me, ordered French toast and coffee and started counting out quarters, dimes and nickels on the countertop after the waitress left.

“Oh, dear,” she muttered softly to herself. “Never mind the coffee,” she called out to the server, “I’ll just have water.” The pain and vulnerability of her poverty was obvious, and again those words, “Do what is put in front of you” came to mind.

“Why don’t you let me get that for you. Ma’am?” I offered. “How about some bacon with that, too?” I nodded at the waitress, who came back with the coffee. The old woman looked at me hesitantly, not sure of what was happening, but then sipped her coffee gratefully and smiled.

“Thank you, young man,” she said, cupping her withered hands around the coffee for warmth. “I’m not used to being treated by young, handsome men anymore. Not for many years,” she added wistfully. I laughed.

“Well, I’m neither young nor handsome, but you’re welcome,” I replied. “I’m David.” “Edna,” she said, “Edna Filbert, like the nut.” Her story flew through my mind so quickly I couldn’t remember not knowing it. The worn gold band around her finger was all that was left of her 48-year marriage to her husband, Dan, who had died two years ago after falling off a ladder trying to clean the roof gutters. Her daughter, Amy, had joined the Army after two years of college and was killed in Iraq. Her oldest son, Alan, worked for a Japanese carmaker outside of Tokyo, and her youngest son, Henry, owned three pizza stores in Florida, too busy dealing with his divorce to pay attention to his mother. Edna lived on very little, as she never worked herself, so had little to speak of from Social Security. What little her husband had left her was stretched fairly thin.

“Would it be all right if I had an egg, too?” she asked, embarrassed but clearly hungry, “and the bacon?”

“Two eggs,” I nodded, smiling. Her eyes misted a bit, grateful for the extra food, and patted my hand in thanks. The waitress came by and refilled our cups. “Poached, please,” Edna asked. “I need to watch my fat intake.”

“So… what about the bacon?” I asked, joking with her but also asking seriously. She shrugged. “You gotta make choices,” she replied. I liked her. She was one of those simple people who were the very salt of the earth — completely honest, decent, loving, uncomplicated by the demands of an increasingly dysfunctional world. Her heart was pure… and I could see it would stop working in about 8 months. Don’t ask me how I knew, but I knew. We talked for a while, and afterwards I paid her check. I also gave her a couple of hundred dollars, knowing she’d need it and left before she could object.

Back on the road again, I started forming a plan to cut north and follow I-90 across the country to Seattle thinking I might find some work there. It felt painfully vague and had no real juice for me, but it was a plan, and a plan to do something was better than no plan to do anything. I didn’t really need the work — I owned a condo in the city outright, and my mother had left me a seriously decent chunk, so I didn’t need to work for the money, I just wanted to do something that was important, that made a difference. I thought I had been doing that back at the paper, but now I wasn’t so sure. Honestly, in retrospect, giving Edna some grocery money seemed more important than winning the Pulitzer.

Above: Gray steel sword on ground during daytime, by Ricardo Cruz on Unsplash