To Climb a Mountain
an excerpt

Joyless, mournful, my eyes are so swollen I can barely see out them. The world has become a blur over these lonesome years. Was it your choice to leave me? Why are you gone? Vanished to nowhere just like that, my dear little boy, just like diving into the sea and never resurfacing. Where are you? Was it your mother? Did she do this? Oh, I can hardly feel my heart, its faint, its weakening do I still have hope? Tell me: can !? You were my oxygen in a place void of everything except carbon dieoxide, a place that chose to leave me. They all left. Are you joining them all the crowds? Or did they take you? Merciless creeps praying on the young, helpless and tender skins of our youth and if they took you, if they dared lay their filthy, grimy paws on you I'd take hold of the scythe building out of the despair of my soul and I'll scrape and scrape in layers: one blanket of skin, another of muscles, nerves twitching, but they won't be able to resist! No not if they took you! My beloved son! I would tie their wrist with the prickly barbwire of the nearby prison and pull and pull until metal and flesh becomes one! Oh and they will regret ever taking you from me! But I don't know do I? I've been waiting here, it’s so cold. Is the heater on? I'm sunken in this faded green, worn and torn chair, it use to comfort me but now it’s just a reminder you won't pop up from behind.
It’s strange how I can see you here resting on my lap: Many smiles, many emotions and yet you're still and lifeless. I flip to the next page and become witness to the same tragedy again and again. No matter how much or how hard I've hoped and wished and even prayed these images stay trapped in these frames and the memories remain unmoved from my dreams. What am I saying? I haven't dreamt only in the day I have, but they were merely synthesized by the urgency of my yearning to see you real, to see you gleam that glow of yours upon me. It’s been years; years ago you were here, my only son.
This room is dim nowadays, without your shine, I can't wait for you to come home because you know I still love you; since the day you were born I've known God was real and you were a gift from Him to me. I'd thanked the Lord for his blessing and I took good care of you, I've never taken you for granted and you always smiled for me. We were happy; our lives were entwined like no other parent and their child. There was so much, now there's nothing, nothing but me and this room. A room scattered: books lying open, flat on their face or on their spine, papers thrashed off desks and shelves across the floor, half empty chip bags, crumbs, a glass spilled over beside my chair, somehow this home of mine reflects perfectly the enchantments of my mind. I can't think of a place that I haven't searched; each scene I leave I left a mess, there was no time to clean up I needed to move on to the next room before you ran away again. Did you run away?
I went to the police station the first day you didn't come home. I can't believe how long I had to wait! So I didn't. When no one would take my case I left and bust through their thousand dollar doors, I steamed with frustration. How could they not send out a search party at once with twenty no thirty officers combing the city! I would've found you and held you safe and close against my bosom then I'd pull back, my hands holding your shoulders, I'd give you a stern look then smile and shake your hand; your father is here, he always will be.
Things didn't turn out like that did they? If by some glorious manifestation it did you'd be sitting in this room with me in the matching couch next to my chair and the room would be clean and light. Maybe we'd be reading or watching a game I would be grinning in my heart but no my heart is frowning.
I roamed the dark streets and alleys feverishly that night and many days and nights after. I was a mother cat crying for her kittens and moving here and there, up and down, looking, searching endlessly. I often returned to our castle with brown and black patches, sometimes it was mud other times it was the strangling stench of number two, stuffed into the threads of my pants and shirts. I cried, my face soiled in hopeless tears, my scouring left me lost. I sobbed for you, for me, for companionship.
My eyes peek up and under the dusky shade of that rusty old lamp, that tarnished aging frame which held her smile encased in a time warp, bringing my lovely wife back to me, her lovely laugh the one that echoes through the damp dens of this cave, empty cave. It gets more and more haunting each year. Blue eyes turn a devilish red, round pupils strangle themselves to become narrow, a gentle smile reshapes to be a wicked grin, she has a secret. I loved her too, she was an angel from Heaven sent by God to deliver His gift to me, my son. With pure white robes dancing about her body in elegant ripples of cloth, I saw her. A brilliant, but gentle light rained all around her from a halo of gold, its radiance gave motion to a dead man a dead me. What I valued most about my emancipator was her quickness, she never kept me waiting. Bam! Dinners ready, Bam! My questions answered, bam! Out came my child. What a blessing! What an amazing person in my life! God I thanked you! I loved them, I took care of them, I cherished, bathed in praise and clean water I did everything I thought I had to do to keep my son, my wife. What did I do wrong? Where did I fail? Why is your punishment lasting so long? Demonic God, sinister king of all these dirtied lands you've strung me up with hundreds of nails pinning my weathered skin to my symbol of death, will this chair be that symbol? Has my purpose here ended?
"Ding-dong." What is that sound? "Ding-dong" I gaze over my arched shoulder and then straighten. "Ding-dong." My heart leaps in fear and my body jumps from my chair. I stand postured in a frozen defense stance: knees bent, eyes open and my arms reach out in a diagonal while my hands and fingers take the form of spiders. Is it death itself ringing at my front door? Has God come again to answer yet another of my sorrows? Oh please don't tell me it is death who’s come this time to deliver my son? No hold on a second maybe it’s not the dead corpse of my progeny, maybe my son has returned at last! I run to that white painted cut out wall and open its crease edges and there amongst the fall leaves prancing on the porch stands a young man in a red t-shirt and black slacks. Mouth hangs a gap; he is cleanly shaved and holding a red package of sorts. He smiles and speaks: "Sorry for being late, ran into some traffic." He is also wearing a cap that reads: "Pizza Hut." He's too old to be mine. The fresh outside air smells more like dough and cheese, pepperoni and peppers too, how strange. It’s nothing that I have imagined; the world has changed so quickly. "That'll be $10.58, sir."
"For my son?"
"Son? No for your pizza. Are you OK, sir?" I can't believe this preposterous man making ridiculous demands! Is it a random he's offering? And that bag, red as the color of blood, is holding the proof of my child’s captivity?! Such cleverness who would have guessed? How unbearable you are God! How cruel the suffering puppets you play in your palm just to beat me with your justice stick. I still don't know my crime!
"Very well I'll pay your ransom just let me see it let me see the proof."
"Uh, OK." He undoes the latch, the flap falls open and rest on his arm. A hand reaches in, he grips and pulls out yet another package! He hands it to me, it’s still warm my son must be near, I lift the simple lid and there it is! I fall to my knees as I cry out: "You cooked my son into a pizza!" I can't help it, I sob in front of my martyr. Which parts are my sons? Is this skin here? His flesh cut into round pepperoni-like shapes. "Where is the rest of him? TELL ME!"
"Sir, I don't know what your talking about. It’s a pizza, it’s NOT made of your son now please pay your bill and let me get back to work."
"Who do you work for?"
"Wha--? Pizza Hut the place you called and ordered this pizza this is NOT made of your son that cost $10.58." I sighed shuffling my hand into my pocket and producing my bribery henceforth.
"I have no other choice do I?"
"I'm afraid not, but I'd suggest you make the choice to go see a doctor or something." The young annoyed delivery boy takes the green, turns away and hastily rushes to his small dent car and drives off and that is the end of that. I stand, shut the door and take a bite of my son. It taste so good, just like a pizza, it is a pizza. That damn boy why couldn't he have plain out and told me what it was then we wouldn't have wasted so much time. Slowly I breathe out and wipe the crazy, sob stain expression from my eyes and mouth.
Upon nights dawn I slither under my sheets and rest my head on a flat pillow. I'm not tired, but my eyes, my round tender eyeballs, having poured many ounces of liquid from their vessels, are plump and ready for closure. Tomorrow I'll be better, tomorrow he'll live again in my world and together we'll be just like before. In the sphere above my shoulders there is black emptiness throughout dream hour.
Each time, each morning when the renewal of light enters the breaking up of slumber I find out that I had slept. What a shame! How more shameful can I be?! Sleeping cozily in my warm bed, wrapped up in a bundle of sheets. And where are you my lonesome son cold and bare without me?
Meticulously I drift then I fall clumsily from my bed to the green carpet floor. OW! The side of my face stings from the burn of the semi stiff and shallow ground; it has failed to catch me gently. Today is Sunday the last day of rest and tomorrow again I'll return to the commuting zone of an everlasting rush hour: Honks and yells, steam and fist. Oh glorious life you are so senseless compacted in every space with sense, a sense of A to B. And in the memory, in the books, if worthy enough for reading, it'll be stored, the only reward suited for pursuing in the endless cycle of A to B.
But I suppose I shouldn't complain I, myself, am in my own little costar of this continuance circle and for my son I will not hinder in my pursuit. I sustain no shame in that only, however, in my failure as of yet to deliver myself to B.
Tediously I scratch my feet against the floor and go into the kitchen. I fill the coffee maker with water and set it on red to boil. I watch it. I watch as the brownish tears fall one by one into a glass painted with white lines and numbers. Drip, splat, drip splat down to goes like a bomb of liquid dropping with patience and concision just to delight my tongue with its texture, taste and instant caffeine high. It takes forever, it takes the time and maybe even more then needed. It’s nothing like my wife...my ex-wife.
Silence beats throughout the walls of my house like a ba-bum, ba-bum except there's nothing. But there it is! The dripping tears of a slowpoke man-made product of coffee that god damned piece of tart with a quick attack of diarrhea! Macaroni can be prepared in five minutes, but yet this simple pot of every adults morning dew it repeatedly proceeds at half a half ounce per other second!
Wait! There is another sound, I take my cup sizzling and steaming and face toward the peculiarity. I swear my features are going askew. How asleep I am! It’s the door, someone's knocking at the door but whom? This early? Not even the Easter Bunny comes hopping around this soon in the morning, with its fur trapping warmth like a hunter would trap a bunny with a box, stick, carrot and string, simple yet effective. Nonetheless, even the hunter wouldn't set out , pounding at people’s door asking for bait this dark in the day. I approach the peek hole, close an eye, lean in, lean close. Suddenly my precious poured coffee slips from my stiff fingers, I jump away from the hot sting of the hot stuff as it has already started to eat away like a feasting pack of piranhas on my toes and soles.
“Oh my God, this can't be happening...” In an instant all pain expires and I throw open the door and there standing before me under the spotlight of the porch light stands my son, my precious Pete. “Pete your here, my God! Why are you knocking you still live here! Come on come on." My voice trembles at the tremendous weight of the moment. I'm not sure how I can express the depth and extreme happiness that's bubbling inside of me like a pot of water sitting over a fire, like a balloon that's being blown into and expanding blow by blow until this very hour it burst and confetti rains down!
I look at him, Pete is a little different even though he postures himself doing nothing as an actor would in hid costume preparing to go on set. His hair is longer; I'd say it's about to lay upon his shoulders and its straight for the most part although there's no doubt that those lumps are knots. I remember my Pete from before his hair was short and groomed, not long and unkempt, it shined from health, not oils and grease, but there's no denying the truth: this mop-head is my son. His face seems longer and his cheeks thinner then previously when they were plump and jolly and we would sample little foods at the grocery store in contrast, here his body is slender and drained.
The ocean can be blue, bluer and more beautiful then any artificial coloring, but sometimes it can turn dull. The sky can be picturesque, its blue pigments daring those below it to stare at its unchallenged, unrivaled talent for color, but then again grey clouds sometimes make it seem less invincible. The same can be said for my son’s eyes. Where once his eyes seemed to have light bulbs burning behind them it’s sad to see that the bulbs have burnt out and have not been replaced. I need to replace them and his dark cloths I need to trade them up too. Pete cracks a half smile as his eyes quickly meet mine then just as swiftly they retreat. He has definitely deceived his innocent nature. What ever he went through it’s deceived him. I take my arm and scoop him to my side, quickly we will walk son, quickly we will heal.
Our first day back as one dinner plate of peas and carrots and this is what happened. After the door closed I could hold back no longer I hugged the returnee with my bear arms and squeezed, or at least tried to, all of the bad nastiness that may have clung from his time away. Gracious God, gentle Lord of the cherubs singing and filling the sky with slender song you seized time so fiercely timid that I saw five New Years balls count down from ten to one at midnight. Those were hopeful seconds that resulted in disappointment come next New years, but this round I haven’t been let down to sulk not at all! My hopes, my wishes and my prayers have all been called upon and granted.
“Would you like something to eat? Do you want to take a shower or a bath first? It’s really good to have you back. And look at you Pete! I’d say you’ve grown three feet into the air, your height challenges mine now ha ha.” I led us to the bathroom taking care as I slip Pete’s smelly black jacket off. I wonder where he got it from. But my curiosity is eluded by my happiness and excitement. This feeling is like a dream and I’m at the edge of a cliff whose bottom, if I fell to it, would be the portal back into reality rather in this case tragedy. When my body starts to tremble as it is now I’m frighten that I’ll collapse over. “ Here you go get cleaned up, sorry about the mess,” I pick up a few dirty shirts and underwear and clump them into a mix with his jacket. “I’m sure you’ll be fine all by yourself. How old are you now sixteen, seventeen?”
“Seventeen.”
‘Ha ha you’re a young man. Well hurry up and I’ll go make you some breakfast.” As I skip away with little girl pigtails, a basket flourishing with freshly picked wild flowers and lips curving to the sky I feel Peter Pans eyes gazing into my back and then I hear the door shut.
Somehow I get the sense of unexpected chills. Once inside the cooking room I stop to think. ‘Hmm, the twelve year old Pete loved to eat Cheerios on Sundays, but now that he’s grown maybe—Nah! For old times sake a bowl full of Cheerios coming up!” If I’m that little girl then the kitchen is my mother who beckons to me and the basket my good intensions.
I go to the small-clustered dining table in the adjoined room and laugh at the filthiness. As an all-star team Pete and I will tackle the heaps of emotional and physical trash that for years has built itself over the old waste. My palm takes the form of a shovel and I scoop a pile off the deck and into the sea. Realizing my fault I halt and see that I have not solved the problem for once the trouble was only here, but as I try to fix it I have only dumped it over there. Simple organization is the solution to this obviously, but it’ll eat up too much of my breakfast preparation time so despite my self-inflicting preaching I haul the books, stacks of newspapers and every other random accretion to the corner where I had begun to store the deck dung.
Right as I set the two bowl full’s of delight down on the renewed table, that shows off its streak of glamour by giggling each time the bowls make contact, clink clink, Pete moderately shifts into the scene. His hair is dripping and draping over his head and face like a curtain.
“Hey there he is. I’ve got Cheerios! Remember before you used to love Cheerios Sunday mornings?” He looks down at the table and reacts as though nothings there.
‘Yea, I guess.” Is all he says as he pulls up a chair and plops before one, I quickly cease the seat of the other. For a couple of long-hand ticks the four walls retain only quietness of no human voices, but the clicks, slurps and crunches are continuous.
“So I know this might be a little too soon, but you were gone for such a long time and I have no clue where you have been or what you went through. I mean you disappeared out of nowhere! I looked everywhere for you and spent many sleepless nights worrying… Do you want to tell me about it?” A short pause elapses.
“Not really.” He takes another bite, my expression degrades, admitting that I bounce back with a small chuckle. It must have been tough for the lad taken so abruptly from his home for all I know he has had less rest then me. Maybe it’s too burdensome to talk about it at the moment even energy is needed to converse, granting this by tomorrow he’ll be ready I’m sure of it. If rain falls out of clouds and tumbles to earth, if my heart is like a child’s eyes then I know. ‘I’m gonna go to sleep.”
“Alright, I understand.” Pete ascends from his spot and puts his dishes in the sink before trotting to his old room, shutting the door and leaving me alone again. “Come tomorrow.” I assure myself once more in a whisper.

In the silhouette of the moon my mind saw something as I retreat to my subconscious, where once there was only darkness not there comes a mist. It drifts languidly in one direction just floating, floating like a sailboat pushing its way through the ocean. I speak inside my head and it echoes. “Where am I? Where am I? Where am I...?” My voice is bouncing off something I know it, I see nothing all around. My minds eyes twirls in circles again and again and the sole entity twinkling about me is this mist and it’s getting heavier.
It feels as though the fog is mutating into a hundred of tiny hands and they're placed behind me trying, I presume, to direct me where to go. But I'm peering into emptiness, the path that these hands are taking seems to go nowhere. It’s so far away to travel, it'll take to long to see the end. I'd rather go back home and be with Pete. He is all that matters, he is all I could care about. I can't wait to go back.
Somehow along the lines of two days and one night absolutely zero has changed. It’s so frustrating! I'm in a car whose tires are stuck in dry tar I try to press the petal to the metal, I honk and grind my teeth, I get out and attempt to push and stomp the car into submission, but it budges not an inch. Other vehicles skid pass me in the neighboring lanes as I'm immobile without a ride on a highway that seems to grow into a point and beyond. Who would dare walk? Again twilight twinkles over head and Pete has not wandered from his room and as far as I know his bed neither.
I walk another time to his threshold and reach, like counts before, for the knob that's dull in the shadow. A petite squeak perches on the hinges as I unclose the door. Little light streaks in from my end, however, from the bare window the moons luminance seeps in ever so gently and extends in a compact square all the way to the back corner where there sits Pete! His knees are curled to his chest and his arms hold them there like straps to his legs. His body is naked except for the boxers clinging to his lover half and as I furrow my brows I notice something: he's shivering! My eyebrows turn to sympathy I rush from the frame of the opening to the side of my boy. I place my hand on his shoulder and feel that he is wet, he's sweating. The moon touches his legs and arms but leave his face and back in the dark.
“Pete are you alright?”
“Yea, yea I, I just had a nightmare.”
“Oh, are you cold? Are you hot? Here I'll get a towel so you can dry off.” He does nothing, I swiftly jump to my feet and pace away to the bathroom and grab a towel returning only seconds later. When he's in my vision a second time his head limps to the side causing my heart to pound hard until it is soften by the soft, rhythmic snores of the life breathing out from my boy. “Ah, he fell asleep.”
I squat beside the young man who drifts in the clouds of slumber and wipe away the liquefied oils that pours from his pores. I place my hand over his forehead, its cold. Taking the blanket off from Pete's messy bed I wrap the quivering child in it. When I stand up and tip toe a few feet to the hall I pause, gaze back and get reeled like a fish to a boat. This boat needs to be put ashore in order for it to really rest and the nearest sand line is that bed so I row him to it and set him on solid ground. Whatever happened to my little boy?
Upon the next morning the distant ball of fire climbs into the dark shades of blue enchanting the sky and greets this half of the world with the early birds and their chirpy tweets. What a wonderful sight! But riddles and snakes I’m too restless to witness anymore.
For twelve years Pete and I were tight knit weaves of a hand woven basket, close and open. It was beautiful, a kind of sweetness lost in a world devoid of hope for good, for promise of salvation. Who could believe in power of God and His prophet’s commands when there is an absence of their presence? As time goes on they get older and weaker. Some kids live off the crimes of their parents, some kids get strong not from lessons preached by the Pope but because their parents beat them. Pete and I were lucky to have not been assimilated into such a cruel script., yet despite that the demons still got him entangled in their heavy, bloody chains and his lips sewed shut with a thread that danced over his mouth in a criss-cross pattern. Threads are broken easily, however, the chains may be persisting to clutch his tiresome soul. How much longer Devil? How much more must you feast on the orb of innocence?
A shuffle and the scoot of a chair behind me captures my attention, here he sits the topic of my mind. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” The youngling grunts then rest his head in the nest of his bony arms.
“I think today’s going to be good, the weathers really looking up.” I catch a breath and hear Pete muffle. “Hey do you want to go out today and throw the baseball or football around?” Without meeting my gaze he slurs.
“I don’t feel good.”
“Still yet? You know what I think you need?” No response receives me. “A nice little coffee shop breakfast. We could eat some pastries, have some coffee or cappuccino. It’ll be good for you to be out in clean air.”
“The air is never clean.” The boat rocks.
“You have never said that before. Is it because the place you were was polluted?” Crickets play their silent song and Pete seems to be listening to them. “Why don't you talk to me anymore?! The indescribable bleakness of those five years whatever it was is over now, it’s the past, behind you! You are here safe with your father lets move on, get on a horse with me and we will ride away from it and into the future. You could be happy again, we can both be happy like before if you let it happen. Let is happen Pete, let go of the past.” Pete withstands me and my pleas, stubbornly striking once more instead to take in the crickets coded notes, but then he parts his lips and strums his vocal cords.
“It’s not that easy.” I'm let down anew! In place of an expected euphony I get a guitarist that puts his hand up and says he's going to sleep now. Leveling my head with Pete's, he looks at me then closes his eyes.
“Come on, trust me.” I enclose my palm over his wrist and lift his arm up, the only piece of him that moves is the part that I'm moving so I give him a little tug. “Let’s go, son.” I feel the veins in his carpus bulge and his fist tense.
In a hush he voices his word: “no.” I could do blank before he erupts even stronger with another spit of lava. “NO!” He tears his arm away, but only to become dormant and still like a sleeping volcano in the next moment. All air has evacuated my lungs I'm unable to even slur. “Sorry.” Pete apologizes and oxygen refills my body.
“No, no I'm sorry I should not have forced you to do anything. Do you still want to go?” With hair dangling over his face he nods. “OK, go get some cloths on and I'll wait for you in the car.”
My fingers tap on the steering wheel of my 1990 Ford Taurus as though I'm aimlessly pressing keys down on a piano. The earth remains turning and the star we orbit continues to rise. As for Pete, nonetheless, he keeps on denying how simple it can be to fall back into place if the place is a good, warm and cozy castle like his abode. Pete stumbles out the door, he must have tripped on something, then he retraces his miscarried steps and shuts the entrance way. He presents himself so lankily dangly as though his cloths don’t fit, but just hang there on his structure like a towel draping over a little boys head. I suppose it is a banal trend amongst the youth, I shouldn’t fret over it, but I can’t help but to wonder where those cloths came from. Of course he is even now wearing the filth sacks that he first wore the morning of his reappearance. We should definitely go cloth shopping I mean I have ringed into work pleading sickness for the week I might as well take full advantage of my lies.
The passenger door clicks and Pete sits his buttocks on the grey cushion
Pete stumbles out the door, he must have tripped on something, then he retraces his miscarried steps and shuts the entranceway. He presents himself so lankily dangly as though his cloths don’t fit, but just hang there on his structure like a towel draping over a little boys head. I suppose it is a banal trend amongst the youth, I shouldn’t fret over it, but I can’t help but to wonder where those cloths came from. Of course he is even now wearing the filth sacks that he first wore the morning of his reappearance. We should definitely go cloth shopping I mean I have ringed into work pleading sickness for the week I might as well take full advantage of my lies.
The passenger door clicks and Pete sits his buttocks on the grey cushion seat besides my own, turns to face the dashboard and slips in his legs and feet to the crumby car floor. “Ready? Here we go.” I twist the key and ignite the engine, following are the after sounds of a mechanical hum and the jingle of unlocking metal shapes. The commuting part of our quest to Mrs. Mo-Mo’s Coffee Corner will be short lived, it establishes itself one block up, another block right then half of one next left. Even so this small span of space contains a sky-high jar of adorability on my memory. “Hey Pete look it’s the park I used to take you too when you were oh I’d say only four or five years old. Can you remember?”
I point out Pete’s window at a diminutive playground that is equipped with a blue and yellow jungle gym and three swing seats: two for the older kids and one shaped like a rubber diaper for the tiny offspring. “Hmmm seems like they did some renovating again. There was sand there when toy were a kid and the last time I looked there was wood chips now the ground is a tar-like material. I wonder what it will be next time.”
“Yea.” Pete is staring at his feet while fiddling his fingers in a nonstop squirm of fidgeting.
“Pete you can look outside.” I aside to him comfortingly and he does it. “This one time you were sitting in the sand playing with a shovel and bucket and your shorts were too low because your butt crack was showing. All the moms were giggling saying how cute you were and you just continued on with your business not caring or anything.” I glance at the subject of my resurfacing reminiscence and I’m just on time to see him flinch like a dead body brought back to life by an injection to the heart. My expression sinks into a question. “What happened there Pete? Are you ok?”
“I’m fine, it’s just been a while since I’ve seen these places.” I’m unsure as to why that would make him twitch the way he did, but I know I should wait till we get to Mrs. Mo-Mo’s in the least before I try to dig deeper.
“Ha ha yep, but now that your back we don’t have to just remember things we can make new memories.” I release a hand from the wheel, clutch his shoulder and shake him back and forth as if to incite excitement, but instead he flinches again and jumps into the corner quivering, his eyes are tightly shut and his breathing becomes uneasy in an instant. “Pete?!” I franticly yell then I lift my head as though God could actually hear me. “My God what have you done?” I refocus on Pete once more. “Pete are you OK? Do you need to go to the hospital?” He doesn’t respond at first, but rather he proceeds to tremble like a mouse with its tail that is trapped beneath the claws of a hungry cat. Then just like that he stops in such a way it would imply that as his eyes were closed he was mending his nerves and now they cease to be disturbed almost akin to a habit.
“No, no don’t take me to the doctor, please.” Pete passively dares a concerned parent to obey and I do acknowledging very well how long we would be at the sick house if I didn’t.
“OK, I won’t take you on one condition, you tell me what caused that reaction out of you.” I face the boy then stare back at the road, he has stayed in his scrunch position only moving his head to the side to avoid answering me I’m guessing. “Let’s get it out Pete or come next turn we won’t take it we will go straight to medical and Dr. Beau will tell me what’s wrong.” Being at such a rebellious age Pete allows his mouth to hang open as he struggles on what he will or will not say. I ask nicely, I add a little fist what else can I do to pry apart the barrier that continues to haunt the Pete and mines relationship? I think I’ve waited lingering enough. “Well?”
“You just startled me is all.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.” He is hiding something, something that’s troubling him and preventing him from reuniting properly with his father. It’s a thorn on a rose, if only Pete would let me clip and sand down those spikes then he would be so sweet, a simple over night project if he’d let me return into his world.
At the next curb I swerve left. "There it is." A massive wooden carved sign hangs above the main building it reads in lime green lights: "Mrs. Mo-Mo's Coffee Corner Cafe." The letters are tangled in a swirling array of green vines with spontaneous richly colored pink vandas blooming in the corners and beneath the name. In the back of this is a dark blue resembling an early night’s sky.
A red brick path is planted up to the door and on each side there is a field of tables with glass middles and a dark green outlining the glass. Four poles make four points underneath it and on the edges of the top they curve down and continue to swirl into a loop. The chairs are green as well with black cushion seats and a few have blue umbrellas sprouting from the center. Under one of them a middle age man and woman sit casually with a mug in one hand and gestures in another as their inaudible conversation lively picks up. I park the car in the lot besides the café, set the emergency break and release my keys from its hold. “This is great there’s not that many people. The service will be fast, but also good just the way everything should be.” I jitter optimistically stepping out of the vehicle then I squint away from the oppressing hand of the rising sun.
“Yes cause fast is the only way to do things…” Pete murmurs and if he intends for me to hear this he doesn’t make it seem so.
“You say something?”
“It smells good.”
“Hmm it does, doesn’t it?” We begin our steps to a table closest to the front entry. As we lounge in the complementary chairs we also, unfortunately, wait for the waitress. I pat the pavement with my shoes while my companion who, strangely considering he is a boy, ignores a pretty young girl who walks by in a short jean skirt. With my eagerness about to eat the last crumb of me I’m about to get up when a small but firm and kind voice behind me stops my stance.
“Well good morning gentlemen.” An older lady says as she scurries up beside our table. She is displayed in a light blue daisy pattern collar shirt, long blue jeans and a white apron, in her hand is a notepad and an astonishingly colorful pen that seems to explode with multiple pigments from the rainbow. It is a fascinating inking utensil.
“Good morning.”
“Now what can I help you with today?”
“I’ll try the fudge brownie coffee and oh a piece of carrot cake.”
“Our fudge brownie coffee is new you know. It smells so good. And what about you young man what will you delight in today?” Pete glances up at his server then back at the menu. His eyes don’t move around as one would usually do when evaluating a food list and trying to match it with the desires of taste buds. My patience wears thin like an old pair of work cloths.
“Come on, boy, don’t keep the lady waiting all morning.” His pupils flutter back and forth between me, the waitress, whose nametag reads: Mrs. Morris, and the choices for his picking. I don’t know what he is doing or why he is doing , but it is irritable. If, however, he’d spoken even with those chains and broken, irksome threads still engorged in his lips I doubt that I would be so inpatient here and now. I wish he would realize the benefits of a speedy trial. “Just get him the same as me.”
“Alright, you know him better then I do.” Mrs. Morris scribbles on her pad with her crazy pen then runs off.
“What is wrong with you Pete?” I’m beginning to believe that this person before me is incognito, I really don’t know him at all. “It was a simple question, you could’ve had anything on that menu, but instead you—you sink into indecision and timid ness like that of a child whom has never made a choice on his own. You haven’t grown up a bit.” My body tense up and with my elbows sitting upon the table my palms clench into a fist. I can hold back no longer so my voice rises as I take my stand and lean over the wall between us. “It’s because you’re acting like a spoiled rotten child that we don’t laugh any more, we don’t talk! You’re quivering and sucking your thumb expecting me to do everything! Well I have had it! I’m tired of waiting and even though you are here physically, to me you still haven’t returned.” Just as I have said before Pete is compressed into a ball, knees to chest and his eyelids seal his vision shut. Then my heart cracks. I look around and sees my embarrassment; people turn away ashamed to be seen prying into this scene I sprung, but if Pete, if Pete would only be with me like before then only then…
I, without another thought, retreat back into my chair and hide my face with my hands and between the cracks of my mask I speak: “ I’m sorry I shouldn’t have yelled. I wish you could understand how I’m feeling right now.”
“I wish you could understand.” Our eyes meet and for once there seems to be a connection. It is nothing close to what I have been expecting, but hopefully it will be the finger that trips the first domino into the next. Oh I can’t wait! I pray for this moment to be the long prayed for time. Come on Pete! Crack a smile, a chuckle, a laugh! Come on and I’ll join you my sweet little boy your almost home! My son looks away, down to the cement ground and I’m on the brink of throwing my chair into the parking lot disappointment! Disappointment! The signal has turned red! Footsteps sound behind me and then I hear that sweet ladies comment.
“Aren’t you boys having an animated chat this morning. I hope these treats lighten things up some.” She laughs and I along with her, but Pete keeps glancing at Ms. Morris then to the floor then back again in a repetition like a broken record player. Is he afraid? Is he curious yet shy?
“Wow it really does smell like brownies ha ha thank you.”
‘Your welcome, sir.”
“Care to try it with me Pete? At the same time now.” He grabs his coffee cup painted with many polka dots and brings it to his lips. I take a sip and then he does. “Ha a two in one special! It’s not too bad what do you think about it Pete?”
“It’s odd.” He takes in another gulp with ease, how strange the coffee is burning hot, how is he doing that?
“It’s not too hot?”
“I’m used to it.”
“How? What happened?” The atmosphere drifts with silence and Pete stares into the brown refection of his cup. “Something did happen that’s why you’re not saying anything. Those people probably shoved fire down your throat or lava for all I know. Who were those people?” No answer, not even a grunt eases from his mouth. “You won’t tell me? Why are you keeping secrets? I’m your father I think I deserve some explanation.”
“Explanation for what?”
“Don’t get smart with me, boy. Who took you? Where did they take you? What did they do? How did you get back? I’ve slaved for five dreadful years looking all over the city for you. Honestly, I don’t really care if you tell me anything I just want things to be the same as before, but the past is haunting you even though you’re trying to play it off by acting like some normal unaffected rebel teen…”
“You don’t know what I know, you don’t feel things I feel.”
“Stop this charade! Can’t you see how high the sun has gotten already? It’s almost above the city buildings. Now spill it so we can go on.” But nothing falls and if it did it is so soft I cannot hear it, I can’t hear anything. What am I doing wrong? Where is the fault? Am I losing you Pete? I will hurry and catch your wrist before you fall from my dream and into the dark pits of reality.

Part 2: A dream, yes, that's all it is, a dream in my sleep. It can't hurt me and I’m not afraid because my curiosity and fears are cindered into a brittle dead black leaf by my eager frustration. “Reveal yourself!” Echoes reflect back at me and I answer them. “I'm here I'm not hiding! Show yourself!” Echoes again reverberate, but they are shorter as though they are closer and travel past me. Have I been drifting toward the object of my mocker?
The mist is still here dancing upon my back and somehow it slowly maneuvered my location without my acknowledgement. Is this my subconscious great solution? I try and move Pete in a way where he won’t notice my trickery? How the hell do I do that? And these damned fog hands! I twirl in a sphere and slash at the dense air and the palms run away only to come back and be chased off again at my thrashing animal actions. Around and around I go clawing in every direction and hitting nonentities, ominous and untouchable. I cannot say how long I battled with this new found enemy it did not harm me and I cannot damage its persisting pursuits to push me. Suddenly, just as I’m about to fall over with my teeter-tottering equilibrium and my back bent forward my face hits a wall and my grip holds the cold barrier so I do not timber.
“What is this?” I whisper with no repetition following. My hands feel around it, it is hard and wintry as Arctic ice. I lay my head back so I may gaze up and wham like that I lose my footing and find myself sitting on my butt as a baby whose learning how to walk. Towering above me I awe at the sight of a massive and jagged mountain whose peak I cannot spot because of a heavy, thick cloud covering the span of the sky. And there are those mischievous particles climbing up it like foolish, fruitless children.

With my surprise dispersing I circulate until I face the opposite direction. All I can claim witness to are clouds hanging low over everything or for all I know, nothing. Making up the set of the ground is green grass that runs and disappears into the safe haven of the shady white draperies. I take a step forward and just like a shovel smashing into my face the dream turns black and my eyes pop open to see a white ceiling looking down at me. My stomach crunches so I am able to sit up. The sheets beneath me feel wet so does my blanket and myself as well. What brought this to life? Was my castle in the sky so terrible and frightening and my mind so numb that I didn’t even know that my physical body trembles and sweats? Or is it that as my subconscious self fought viciously, clawed exhaustively the critters of my dismay, I simultaneously protested with my worldly shell? Enough of this I shouldn’t pay awareness; if it brings me such trouble it can’t do me any good. When a child finds a snail and tosses it here and there like a plastic toy it attains no pleasure as the imp does and nothing beneficial will ever come for the slimy creature. On the contrary, a ticking clock tickers for when the snails home will break and then death will meet the slug as its thrown for the last time and the kids is dragged away by his mother.
I rid myself of my coverings and scoop plus toss it to the side not minding that half has fallen over the edge of my bed. I move out of my drowsy room and make my way to Pete’s dorm which is now a diurnal for my mornings. I want to see, I need to check is he still there smothering his body into the corner and his thighs against his torso? I knock womanly against his wall and hear not a sound so I proceed to unfasten the handle with the squeak nevertheless sitting on the hinges.
Sticking my nose into the womb sack that has been ripped from the sacrosanct mother, I can feel the touch of a domineering chill. A cold air washes through the pores and roots of my head, it's origin confines itself to a puzzle never to be solved, and constricts my features into a still frame. Sitting in the far corner, half naked and glistening, my Pete is again distorting my patience for change.
Today I return to the hellhole of earth's crust, the plantation of slave laborers with its meager pay of water and bread, the time away from Pete, the place called work. In retrospect, I have never looked forward to heading down the road in the morning's darkness, it was a lonely, quiet journey. The quarter notes and halfs beating out of the care speakers from the antenna web, catching radio waves, were plastic foods poisoning my heart with falsities, but I listened to it, nonetheless, to fill the void, ever deepening. In contrast, upon the black and tar pavement of my return, upon the orange, yellow and clear sunset sky my muscled pump filtered out the bitter despair that weakened me to feed on the inorganic fruits of life for I understood by the concept of repetition, at home for me, my son, the one true presence whose smile had once brought me to health, waited.
But now in the present I worry about my absence, will he run away to the place he grew to have comfort in without my enforcing reminder buzzing his wandering hair? I cannot leave on this morn neglecting my duty as a father to inform Pete with the surest sternness that though I may seem to disappear every morning I will always fly on top of the wind to come back by the dinner bell’s ring as I did without fail when he was five and nine and twelve and as I will to this day when hi is seventeen. I let myself slip into the boy’s room and kneel to his side I move my hand to his pale shoulder and shake him gently as I whisper: “Pete, Pete wake up.”
He stirs then with his eyes still laying shut, his eyebrows furrows as his breathing grows thicker. He starts to struggle with something, first he pushes my hand back to my side then he paws at my face softly mumbling inaudibly before I got a hold of his wrist trying to stop him and it is then something unexpected happens, like cats fighting he thrashes his fingers and dirty nails at my head one after the other in a nonstop angry fit and the few times he passes through my defense those unwanted claws dug into the flesh of my cheek. I could feel the swarthy liquid they call blood seep from the battle wound and slide down my cheek and to the ground. All the while Pete’s murmuring is drained through a drainer and his thoughts and words become clearer.
“No, stop…Not tonight…please...Let me go! I want to go home, please let me…Stop no more!, no more! I’m begging you! My mouth hur…ts…”