Listen to the Lambs

by Daniel Black

  “But you did. You shared your father.”

  “No, I didn’t. I would never have shared him if I’d had the choice.”

  “I wouldn’t have, either.”

  They looked away in unison, one toward the east, the other the west. Then abruptly Lizzie returned and said, “Why are we here? What can we do?”

  Elisha hesitated, knowing his idea was a serious risk. “It’s about you.”

  “Me?” Lizzie’s brow furrowed with curiosity.

  “Yes. You. I think you can help save your father.”

  Lizzie blinked repeatedly, as if the thought was either glorious or ridiculous. Elisha couldn’t tell.

  “How?”

  “By freeing him now.”

  “What? What are you talking about? Is he back in jail? I thought he got out.”

  “He did. I don’t mean free in that sense. I mean in his heart. In your heart.”

  Lizzie huffed irritably. “Please tell me what you mean. This isn’t making sense.”

  Elisha eased closer, hoping to exude more compassion than he could speak. An attempted smile failed. “I’m sure I don’t have a right to say what I’m about to say, but, under the circumstances, I’m going to say it.”

  “Please!”

  They paused to let a stranger pass; then Elisha asked, “Can you have mercy on your father? Maybe tell him you still love him? That’s what he needs to hear right now.”

  Lizzie’s expression made Elisha fear that, at any moment, she’d slap the shit out of him. Her voice was almost inaudible. “You don’t have the right to ask me that. You don’t have the right!”

  “I know I don’t, but I had to. His mind is cloudy. I can see it. He thinks he’s a failure because of you and your brother. He talks about y’all all the time.”

  “He is a failure!” she blurted, causing Elisha to jump. “Any man who leaves his kids is a failure!”

  Elisha winced but pressed on. “I wouldn’t know. I never had a father. Not until I met yours.”

  Their eyes clashed. Lizzie calmed a bit. Elisha had never spoken at such length before, and now he knew how exhausting conversation could be.

  “… and when I met yours, I knew he would never leave a child. Never. The only reason he could love me was because he loved you.”

  Lizzie dabbed the right and left corners of her eyes. “I thought he loved me. But he didn’t. He loved himself. It was all about him, what he wanted, what he needed. It had nothing to do with me or my brother. Everything he did was for himself.”

  “No. No, it wasn’t. He was trying to figure out another way to live. I understand it. He told me everything. Especially how much he adored you.”

  Lizzie covered her mouth and squealed. “I could never hate him. I just couldn’t do it. I wanted to, thinking that maybe he’d come back if he knew I was mad at him, but I couldn’t hate him. I knew what kind of man he was. I remember how he used to tickle me and my brother for hours after he got off work. He had to be tired, but he did it anyway. I miss him so much.” Her shoulders heaved and she began to cry freely. Seconds later she said, “We were only kids when he left.”

  “He never said why?”

  “There is no why. No explanation makes sense to a child who loves her father.”

  Elisha whispered, “So you admit you love him.”

  “Of course I love him. I never stopped loving him. I just hate he wasn’t there for me.”

  “He hates it, too. I hear him talking to God about it sometimes in his sleep.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He tortures himself every day.”

  Lizzie smeared tears into her cheeks. “I used to write him love notes and leave them all across the city, hoping he’d get them. I left some on park benches, beneath bridges, at shelters … you name it. I never knew where he was, but I thought he’d get at least a few of them. Who else has his name?”

  Elisha nodded. Why hadn’t Lazarus mentioned this? “I don’t know if he got them or not, but I know he thinks of you every day. Usually he tells us some story about you or your brother and we try to imagine what it must’ve been like to live like that.”

  “It was a good life. We didn’t want for anything.”

  “Maybe that’s what he was trying to teach you. How to want for something. How to notice the important things in life and not get lost in trivial stuff.”

  Lizzie shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Elisha took a chance. “Will you help me save him? I know he’s not perfect, but we need him.”

  “We?”

  “Yes. You and me and … the others.”

  She almost asked about these others but quickly realized she didn’t care. “I just want my father back. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “I can see why. He’s a good man. I’m sure he meant well back when he left.”

  “Then you’re more sure than me.” She hoisted her purse strap onto her shoulder. “I love him, but I’m not sure I forgive him. Maybe it doesn’t matter.”

  “It does! That’s why I’m here. I’m hoping you’ll forgive him and set him free. It’s what he needs to have a clear head and win this case.”

  Lizzie didn’t oblige. Instead, she stepped from the gazebo onto the walking path.

  Elisha asked, “How have you made it all these years? If you didn’t believe he meant well?”

  Lizzie chuckled and said, “I met my Heavenly Father. That’s how.” Her breath reeked of vehemence. “And I stopped expecting Daddy to show up. It’s that simple. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly, and that’s what I’ve had since I met Him.”

  “You love God more than your daddy?”

  “I love God in place of my daddy. God will never leave me or forsake me. That’s more than I can say for him.”

  Elisha had no rebuttal. “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  She hesitated. “Earlier today, actually. And I prayed for him, that he might give his life to Christ and be changed. Nothing else can help him now.”

  “You sound so hopeless.”

  “Not anymore.” She flashed a fake smile. “Not at all.”

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I just hoped we could work together to help a man who gave up everything for both of us.”

  “Is that what he did? He gave up everything for me? I thought he gave me up for everything.” Her voice cracked before she could mute it. “He walked away when I was a little girl and never looked back.”

  “That’s not what he says.”

  “I don’t care what he says. I know what he did.”

  “I think he meant well. Maybe his plan didn’t work the way he’d hoped it would, but his heart was in the right place.”

  “Was it? Really? How would you know?”

  Elisha sensed her wrath. “Because I know him. He took care of me when nobody else would. I hear him crying at night sometimes.”

  Lizzie covered her mouth. As much as she critiqued Lazarus, she obviously adored him. Elisha thought of Sorrow and understood.

  “I didn’t get any more from him than you did.” Elisha said. “I see that now. We both want something we can’t have.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “A father all our own. All to ourselves.”

  Lizzie stared blankly.

  “But we’ll have to share him. If we have him at all.”

  She gazed into the dusky sky. “I don’t think I want to share him. You can have him if you want him.”

  “Don’t say that. It would kill him. He never meant to hurt you. Or leave you. You know that. I know that, too. He’s a good man. He just has big dreams. He can’t help it.”

  “No, I guess he can’t.”

  Elisha liked Lizzie. She had every reason to despise Lazarus, but she couldn’t. At least she was trying not to.

  Suddenly Lizzie asked, “Do you know the Lord?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you saved and filled with the precious Holy Ghost?”

  Elisha sh
ook his head. “I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “Well, you will one day. It’s certainly kept me when nothing else could.”

  Hurt and sadness weighed Lizzie’s eyelids. Each time she blinked, Elisha feared she’d crumble to the earth.

  “We can save him,” he pleaded. “I know we can. And things’ll be different. You’ll see.”

  “I stopped looking for things to be different a long time ago.”

  Elisha stepped forward and took her hand. He told the story of Sorrow, his hope for their reunion, his devastation at her loss. Lizzie cried for him. Together, they mourned childhood dreams unrealized. Both had surrendered hearts to parents who’d made unpardonable decisions. As children, Lizzie and Elisha had felt loved and prioritized; as adults, they felt overlooked and forsaken. Lazarus had been something different to each of them, and Elisha begged Lizzie to give this new man a chance. She wanted to, more than anything, but all her trust in him was gone.

  “He sees now what he missed. There was just something his spirit needed, and I think he finally found it. He had to. He couldn’t live without it.”

  Lizzie licked her lips but said nothing.

  “Just try to forgive him.”

  Elisha smiled; Lizzie didn’t. “We’ll see. Some chances come once in a lifetime.”

  “That’s true. But when you have a second chance like you do with your father, you should take it. Everybody doesn’t get it. Trust me. I know.”

  Lizzie rubbed his hands lovingly, sincerely, then, like a phantom, vanished into the night.

  Chapter 33

  The next day, The Comforter stood at the edge of the miniature park across from Quad’s pseudomansion. She liked the two Lazaruses reconnected, but there was still a third, and she wouldn’t rest until the trinity had been rejoined. Her words, The Word, the magic of words, had planted seeds for Quad’s healing, but it would take more, far more, than a note and a conversation to bring forth the lost lamb, the black sheep of the fold. Yet she believed it could happen. The question was how. Already Quad had phoned his grandfather who’d sent word that he wished his son well. There was nothing more Junior could do. He was barely stable himself! Still, The Comforter needed the second and the third Lazarus (rejoined). And since need gives birth to invention, she began to create.

  It started with a bouquet of jonquils. As a kid, Lazarus loved to smell their fragrance, popping up in arbitrary places across the farm, and once he picked a handful and presented them to Granddaddy. He was horrified. Not that the boy liked flowers, although that was certainly troubling, but that he’d ended their lives so carelessly. “What would you do if someone just came along and cut off your feet?” The analogy seemed awkward in a child’s head, but Lazarus got the point. He apologized and asked what he could do in recompense for the lives lost. Granddaddy told him to plant as many as he’d picked. So Lazarus earned money here and there until he purchased several bunches of jonquils from the local hardware store. He tried, to the best of his ability, to restore plants from where he’d taken them. He never forgot the lesson. Each spring he inquired about the plants’ blooming, and if they had flowered nicely he insisted that Granddaddy take a picture and send it. For years the Polaroids decorated Lazarus’s bedroom wall, until the day his father insisted he was too old for that and took them down. Lazarus never knew what Junior did with them.

  The Comforter remembered the look in Lazarus’s eyes when he told the story. On one hand, he seemed to understand a father’s dismay about a son with a wall of flowers; on the other, somewhere in his heart, he wished he had the pictures, mostly as a reminder of a beautiful past far gone. So, on Junior’s behalf, The Comforter found a pot of jonquils and sat them on Quad’s doorstep with a note that read: Sorry for what I took from you. Quad hadn’t arrived home yet and wouldn’t understand the full implications of things, but he didn’t need to. He was the carrier, the bridge, the connection The Comforter hoped would reconnect those long divided. His only function was to deliver to Lazarus what Junior had sent. If Quad did that, everything would be in motion.

  The Comforter waited. She clapped hands lightly and shuffled in a circle like her ancestors in a ring shout. Every word uttered was something otherworldly, something she hoped would soften Quad’s heart and compel him to take his father the offering. If he didn’t dash the beautiful pastel vase against a stone, there was hope. If he did, there was still hope; she’d simply have to try another plan.

  An hour later, Quad’s car whipped into the driveway. Upon noticing potted flowers at his doorstep, he halted abruptly and stared. The Comforter lurked behind a tree, studying him and calling his name softly: “Lazarus number four! Oh, Lazarus number four! Do not begrudge your fathers, dear Lazarus!” He looked around, unsure of what to make of things, then reached for the small card nestled among green stems and yellow blooms. The Comforter stretched her hands toward him and summoned his willingness to fix what his elders had foiled. Reading the note again and again, Quad refolded it, stuffed it back into the miniature envelope, and returned it to its original resting place. He then lifted the vase carefully and hid his nose among the blossoms. His energy shifted. Wherever he’d needed to go apparently could wait. He held the vase tenderly, sweetly, like one bearing a precious fragile thing. The Comforter reached toward heaven. Her plan was working.

  With the flowerpot in one hand, Quad unlocked the front door with the other. He vanished for several minutes, then reappeared with the same urgency he’d had originally. His steps were hurried and erratic, out of time and rhythm, and in one quick gesture he rested the plant on the floor of the backseat and drove away. The Comforter didn’t know his destination, but she knew something invisible had been orchestrated, and, for the first time, she felt the healing of the lost black lamb.

  It was dark when The Family finally gathered in The Upper Room. Lazarus had been there for hours, trying to understand how it had happened. He knew who’d sent the flowers. He didn’t know how, but no one else would’ve known about the jonquils. Of course they took Lazarus back to Granddaddy’s farm and the pictures Junior had discarded, but what did all this mean now? Was this a truce, a treaty, an apology from a defeated father to a skeptical son? Or a reminder to Lazarus that the past is never far behind? He didn’t know. He racked his brain while family members gave their interpretation.

  “Flowers always mean something lovely,” Cinderella offered dreamily. She lay upon Lazarus’s bed with her chin cupped in her palms. “You don’t have to know what the sender meant. You just have to know what they mean to you. That’s the point. And that’s the only point, I think.”

  Lazarus held the pot between his legs and fingered the yellow blooms. The whole thing troubled him, for reasons he couldn’t explain, although he was sure Junior meant well. But why now? And who had delivered them? Quad? Lizzie? How did they know where Lazarus lived? They had never been to The Upper Room. Perhaps The Comforter had brought the jonquils. She had that strange look upon her face, the one she wore when there was something she couldn’t share. It could’ve been her. But in his heart he doubted it.

  “I ain’t never got flowers,” Legion said, “But I’ve always thought that if I did, someone would probably be apologizing for something.”

  “Why you say that?” Cinderella asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess flowers seem to fix what we mess up. They always bloom after a storm or heavy rain. My mother told me that. She liked flowers. My father hated them.”

  “Did he give her flowers? Since she liked them?”

  “No. She gave them to herself. Every month or so, she’d buy a bouquet when she went to the grocery store. In the spring, she always planted a small bed of petunias and marigolds on both sides of the front steps. I asked why she didn’t plant the kind that comes back every year, and she said, ‘’Cause most of them don’t bloom.’ And she wanted blooms. Plus, she said she wasn’t sure if she’d be back every year, so no use wasting time planting plants she might have to leave behind!” Legion screech
ed. The others smirked sadly.

  “Sometimes we miss the point of things trying to figure them out,” Elisha whispered. “We think we need the beginning of the story when really all we need is the end.”

  The Comforter nodded.

  “I just hate that flowers don’t last,” Cinderella decried. “It’s such a shame. All that beauty gone to waste in a matter of days.”

  “There is no waste, daughter,” The Comforter said. “Beauty moves and changes form, but it cannot be destroyed. That’s the nature of it. You can’t possess it. Or even hold it. You can only experience it.”

  “That’s the problem!” Cinderella said. “It never stays.”

  “Yes, it does,” The Comforter contradicted her. “It simply never stays the same. Beauty is always looking for new ways to be beautiful. So it must surrender one form for another. We shall do likewise.”

  Cinderella tried to comprehend what The Comforter had said. Failing miserably, she shrugged and added, “I suppose you’re right. Nothing gets to be beautiful forever. My, how I know that!”

  Everyone cackled.

  The Comforter elaborated, “No, everything is beautiful all the time. It’s just not the same beauty. And that’s the problem with the world: We want the same beauty constantly. Which really means we don’t want beauty at all.”

  They waited.

  “We want admiration. Someone to look at us and be frozen with wonder. And we can have that—but there’s no beauty in it.”

  Lazarus wondered what any of this had to do with him and the jonquils. The Comforter answered, “If we stare at these flowers and do nothing, we’ve missed their beauty. We have to translate this into something we’ve never seen before.”

  Others nodded, confused.

  Lazarus said, “A man saw Mr. Dupont’s car down off of Metropolitan late one night. He said it was after three o’clock in the morning.”

  The Family waited for more.

  “Is that all he said?” Cinderella asked.

  “Yep.”

  Legion said, “Was it around the time of the murder?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

  They exchanged possibilities of Dupont’s motive until The Comforter warned, “Don’t become what we’ve always hated. He has a right to be anywhere he chooses, anytime he chooses.” Everyone agreed. Yet they knew this meant something important.