Truth in Tears

by Erisian

My dad was never one to go to church, nor one to talk about what he believed. As a teenager I asked him once if he believed in God and even now I remember his reply. He looked at me carefully from behind those antiquated black-rimmed glasses of his and said simply, “Doesn’t matter if I believe or not, son. God is either there or he isn’t. But this life, well, this life is mine to live as I choose.” At the time I was frustrated that he didn't answer the question; it wasn’t until much later that I realized he had in fact answered something perhaps far deeper.

He was like that, my dad.

We were all here to remember him, those of us who had come to this informal wake at the small house I'd grown up in. It was his heart that had failed, only weeks after we'd celebrated his seventieth birthday. My wife, myself, and my two sons were here, along with several of Dad’s closest friends. They were mostly hardware engineers like him with whom he had worked over his long career, plus the gardener who had tended his lawn and rose bushes after Dad himself couldn’t manage them alone. Don’t think the gardener spoke any English, but we handed him a glass of wine and together we toasted Dad without anyone needing to understand the words.

Mom, of course, wasn’t here. She’d given her life bringing me into this world. Growing up it was just me and Dad, though I guess I should include Buppy, the stray pup we found lost and hungry when I was three. Dad had let me name him and didn't even bat an eye when his young son had declared the pup's new and rather ridiculous name. From thenceforth the dog was known as Buppy, and I think in its own way the choice had readily amused my father.

“Robert?” My dad’s best friend of them all, Peter, was standing behind me in the kitchen where all of Dad's favorite Le Crouset pots and pans now sat empty and unused. Guess I had spaced out for a moment, so I turned and tried to smile though I wasn't entirely successful. Peter was holding something in his hands: a strange wooden box, maybe six inches wide and over three feet long.

“Robert,” he said again, “Lyle told me to give this to you when he’d gone. Asked me to tell you not to grieve for him too much and that you’d understand what it meant.”

I must’ve looked puzzled, because he simply placed the box into my uncertain hands and with a squeeze of a shoulder he turned away to get himself some more wine.

A set of hinges ran along the length of the side and, having taken the box down the hall to my old room for some privacy, they opened easily. And Dad had once again been right.

I did understand. More so, I remembered.

I must have been perhaps six or thereabouts when it happened. I had gone to bed in the evening already as bedtime was an early eight o’clock, I think Dad knew I’d occasionally sneak a flashlight under my covers to keep reading whatever newest comic book I had picked up from the corner store.

I hadn't read too late that night and fallen into a sound sleep. But a loud thump outside my window followed by moans had startled me right awake.

Peering through the blinds my eyes grew wide and I immediately ran out into the living room where Dad was sitting in his favorite and threadbare bathrobe, reading his own book which was rather thicker than my comics.

“Dad! There’s someone in the yard and I think he’s on fire!” is roughly what I shouted if I remember rightly.

Carefully putting down the book, he looked at me in all my frantic and alarmed condition and said calmly, “Well, we better go look then, shouldn’t we?”

He led the way through the kitchen to the side door, motioning for me to control Buppy who was already whining and scratching at it. Opening the door he stepped out onto the porch while I held onto Buppy’s collar to keep him from bolting out as well.

“Who is it, Dad?” Trying to keep Buppy inside made it rather hard to look out the door past him, so all I could see was some smoke and the flickering of fire-light over the grass.

“Stay inside, Bobby. Get some clean towels, and then lay them over the couch. I’ll be right in.”

He turned and shut the door, then I heard him turning on the hose.

I scrambled to do as he had said and quickly covered the brown leather couch with bath towels from the cupboard. Had to get the step-stool out to reach them as they were kept on one of the higher shelves.

The door opened again, and a moment later Dad still in his blue pajamas carried in a man he had wrapped up with his bathrobe. Water dripped from the man's arms and legs, and Dad's robe was soaked through and oddly bunched up along the back. Dad took him over to the couch and rather gently laid him down upon the towels.

The man had long silver hair, patches of which were blackened and obviously burnt. As Dad had put him down, he emitted a grunt of pain.

“He's hurt!” I blurted. “Do we get an ambulance?” The moan sent shivers across my arms, all the hairs standing on end. It was if each sound pulled a matching echo of his pain from out of my heart. At my side Buppy sat and whined, distressed and as unsure as I was as to what to do.

I saw Dad frown in thought for a moment then shake his head. “No, Bobby, I don’t think they can do anything for him.”

We both stared at the silver haired stranger, and I noticed steam escaping from under the robe. Dad rubbed a hand through his own starting-to-grey hair as if himself pondering what else should be done.

“Is he burnt?”I asked. “We gotta do-”

The strangers cry as he rolled over startled me into silence. He emitted a series of words containing such agony and rage, the language indecipherable but I felt its emotion as it plucked a steady stream of tears right from my eyes.

I stood there shaking from the intensity and the purity of the expressed pain.

Dad put a hand on my shoulder, his eyes filled with an unusual tenderness. “Go hold his hand, son. He needs all the comfort you can offer right now.”

I nodded and scurried to kneel beside the couch, taking the stranger’s hand, so much bigger than my own. It was oddly smooth and soft but gripped hard – hard enough to hurt, but I didn’t let go.

He cried out again, this time with more sorrow than anger as those odd words flowed past his lips. Each phrase tore at me, and all I wanted was for that voice to stop being filled with such terrible sadness.

“Please mister, don’t die. Please.”

Buppy dared to move closer, lying at my side as I knelt by the couch.

I must have held his hand, tears leaking down my cheeks, for the better part of an hour. By then he had stopped speaking and seemed to be breathing easier. His face looked young, no whiskers to darken or rough up skin as perfect as fired porcelain. Dad had sat in his chair without a word until he noticed the stranger’s eyes had opened revealing two white within white circles which stared deeply into my own.

“Bobby,” Dad said quietly, “You should get to bed.”

“But-”

“Now, Robert. He'll be alright.”

Reluctantly I let go of the man’s hand and after wiping my own cheeks clear, I sullenly walked out of the living room, my dog dutifully following.

But I didn’t go to bed, even though I was downright overwhelmed with exhaustion. Instead I closed my bedroom door as if I had gone in – leaving poor Buppy locked in there awaiting my return – and I snuck back down the hall to hide around the doorway to try and hear what, if anything, was being said.

I heard the clink of glasses and the sound of Dad pouring from the crystal decanter of sherry he kept for his nightcaps.

“Care for a drink?” Dad asked.

“Is this…is this Hell?” The man’s voice was remarkably clear to my ears, as if each syllable was a perfect bell being rung once before fading into silence.

“Only if you make it one.” I heard Dad sit again in his favorite chair, the old springs creaking as he did so.

“So. Earth then.” There was a pause. “Do you know what I am?”

Dad put down his glass with another clink onto the coffee table. “Yes. Yes, I reckon I do.”

A tension suddenly built across my muscles and I guess Dad must have felt it too for he immediately said, “Don’t worry. I haven’t called anyone. It’s just me and the boy here. Figured they couldn’t do anything for you anyway except make things more difficult for everyone.”

“The boy-”

“Is my son.” Dad said that with a firmness and sharp edge to his voice.

“He,” the man whispered though I could still hear. “He held my hand and offered…”

Muffled sobs then came from the other room for a minute. Dad stayed quiet and eventually the stranger spoke again, confusion and pain lacing through the words.

“I hate you,” the man said. Followed a moment later by, “I hate your kind.” And then, “I fought to destroy you all.”

Another pause as Dad remained silent.

Then the man said, “You should kill me.”

“Maybe so. But I reckon I won’t be doing that.”

“Why wouldn't you?”

“You fell into my yard, my home. You don’t kill strays.” Then, after another awkward silence, Dad added, “Besides, my boy wanted you to live.”

“You…forgive me?” the stranger asked, disbelief clear as day.

Dad snorted. I heard him pick up his glass and he likely drained it dry before setting it back down.

“Forgiveness,” my dad replied. “Not my department to give, I figure. That’s between you and your maker. Though if you can forgive yourself I would imagine he’d forgive you too. But I will however ask you why.”

“Why?”

“Yep. Why would you hate us so and wish us gone?”

I held my breath for at least a minute before the stranger replied.

“I’ve seen the future lines, where events may lead. Far beyond your understanding. I saw the threat your kind is to the all once the returned light has shown you the way. How the all I have served and loved could then be undone at your hands.”

“Ah. So you don’t really hate, you simply fear.”

“I don’t-!” The man caught himself then admitted wearily, “Maybe.”

“Well, I can’t fault you for that. Heck, we fear ourselves too, these days.” Dad paused and the chair creaked again. “You either submit to that fear, or you face it and work to not let what you fear come to pass.”

“I was fighting to not let it come to pass!”

“Were you? Or were you fighting to avoid having to face it?”

“I…” The stranger fell silent.

“You should rest for a little longer before trying to move on to, well, to wherever it is you’ll go. Best I don’t know.”

I heard Dad get up from his chair. “But before you do, you may want to consider the truth to be found within my son’s tears.”

Dad walked out of the living room before I could get down the hall, for my legs were too tired to move. Without a word he picked me up and carried me to my bed where Buppy curled up over my feet, tail thumping happily against the blankets.

The next morning I had overslept and by the time I stumbled out of my room the stranger had already gone. When I asked Dad about it he simply smiled, ruffled my hair, and told me I had had a really interesting dream. All the towels were put away in the cupboard and he had freshly mowed the lawn.

So I had believed him.

But within the box which my dad's friend had given me lay a long and white crystalline feather, one which was clearly not from any bird I knew. Partially translucent, all the shades of the rainbow flickered along its veins wherever the sunlight sneaking past my old curtains happened to touch it.

I ran a finger along its edge and the feather hummed a singular note both like and unlike the sound one gets from a crystal wineglass' rim. The music filled my heart and, not wanting it to stop, my finger eventually reached the feather's end which had been blackened and discolored as if burnt and melted by a fierce yet holy flame.

Even so it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.