Fatherhood

by Thomas H. Cook

  For a moment we lay together, she beneath me, breathing quietly, the side of her face pressed against mine.

  “I love you,” I told her, then lifted myself from her so that I could see her face.

  She was not looking at me, nor even in my direction. Instead, her eyes were fixed on the sky that hung above us, the bright coin of the moon, the scattered stars, glistening with tears as she peered upward to where I knew her thoughts had flown. Away from me. Away. Away. Toward the one she truly loved and still longed for, the boy whose beauty was equal to her own, and for whom I could serve as nothing more than a base and unworthy substitute.

  And yet I loved her, married her, then watched in growing astonishment as her belly grew day by day until our son was born.

  Our son. So the townspeople called him. So she called him and I called him. But I knew that he was not mine. His skin had a different shade, his hair a different texture. He was tall and narrow at the waist, I was short and stocky. There could be no doubt that he was the fruit of other loins than mine. Not my child, at all, but rather the son of that handsome young boy she’d strolled the town streets with, and whose disappearance, whether by death or desertion, had left her so bereft and downcast that I’d tried to cheer her with a carved horse, walked the streets and byways with her, soothed and consoled her, sat with her on the far hillside, even made love to her there, and later married her, and in consequence of all that now found myself the parent and support of a child who was clearly not my own.

  He was born barely six months after our night of love. Born weighty and full-bodied and with a great mass of black hair, so that it could not be doubted that he had lived out the full term of his nurture.

  From the first moment, she adored him, coddled him, made him the apple of her eye. She read to him and sang to him, and wiped his soiled face and feet and hindquarters. He was her “dear one,” her “beloved,” her “treasure.”

  But he was none of those things to me. Each time I saw him, I also saw his father, that lank and irresponsible youth who’d stolen my wife’s love at so early an age that it could never be recaptured by her or reinvested in me. He had taken the love she might have better spent elsewhere, and in doing that, he had left both of us impoverished. I hated him, and I yearned for vengeance. But he had fled to parts unknown, and so I had no throat to squeeze, no flesh to cut. In his stead, I had only his son. And thus I took out my revenge on a boy who, as the years passed, looked more and more like his youthful father, who had the same limber gait and airy disposition, a boy who had little use for my craft, took no interest in my business, preferring to linger in the town square, talking idly to the old men who gathered there, or wile away the hours by reading books on the very hillside where I’d made love to his mother, and who, even as I’d released myself into her, had slept in the warm depths of her flesh.

  I often thought of that. The fact that my “son” had been inside her that night, that my own seed had labored to reach a womb already hardened against them. Sometimes, lost in such dreadful speculations I would strike out at him, using my tongue like a knife, hurling glances toward him like balls of flame.

  “Why do you hate him so?” my wife asked me time after time during those early years. “He wants to love you, but you won’t let him.”

  My response was always the same, an icy silence followed by a shrug.

  And so the years passed, my mood growing colder and more sullen as I continued to live as a stranger in my own household. In the evening, I would sit by the fire and watch as a wife who had deceived me and a son who was not my son played games or read together, laughed at private jokes, and discussed subjects in which I had no interest and from whose content and significance I felt purposely excluded. Everything they did served only to heighten my solitary rage. The sound of their laughter was like a blade thrust in my ear, and when they huddled in conversation at the far corner of the room, their whispers came to me like the hissing of serpents.

  During this time my wife and I had terrible rows. Once, as I tried to leave the room, she grabbed my arm and whirled me back around. “You’re driving him from the house,” she said. “He’ll end up on the street if you don’t stop it. Is that what you want?”

  For once, I answered with the truth. “Yes, I do. I don’t want him to live here anymore.”

  She looked at me, utterly shocked not only by what I’d said, but the spitefulness with which I’d said it. “Where do you expect him to live?”

  I refused to retreat. “I don’t care where he lives,” I answered. “He’s old enough to be on his own.” There was a pause before I released the words I’d managed to choke back for years. “And if he can’t take care of himself, then let his real father take care of him for a while.”

  With that, I watched as tears welled up in her eyes before she turned and fled the room.

  But even after that, she didn’t leave. Nor did her son. And so, in the end, I had to stay in the same house with them, live a life of silent, inner smoldering.

  A year later he turned fifteen. He was nearly a foot taller than I was by then. He’d also gained something of a reputation as a scholar, a fact that pleased his mother as much as it disgusted me. For what was the use of all his learning if the central truth of his life remained unrevealed? What good all his command of philosophy and theology if he would never know who his real father was, never know where he’d gotten his curly black hair and lean physique, nor even that keenness of mind which, given the fact that he thought me his natural father, must have struck him as the most inexplicable thing of all?

  But for all our vast differences of mind and appearance, he never seemed to doubt that I was truly his father. He never asked about other relatives, nor about any matter pertaining to his origins or birth. When I called him to his chores, he answered, “Yes, Father,” and when he asked my permission, it was always, “May I, Father?” do this or that. Indeed, he seemed to relish using the word. So much so that I finally decided it was his way of mocking me, calling me “Father” at every opportunity for no other reason than to emphasize the point either that he knew I was not his father, or that he wished that I were not.

  For fifteen years I had endured the insult he represented to me, my wife’s deviousness, her false claim of virginity, the fact that I’d had to maintain a charade from the moment of his birth, claiming a paternity that neither I nor any of my neighbors believed to be genuine. It had not been easy, but I had borne it all. But with his final attempt to humiliate me by means of this exaggerated show of filial obedience and devotion, this incessant repetition of “Father, this” and “Father, that,” he had finally broken the back of my self-control.

  And so I told him to get out, that he was no longer welcome in my house, that no more meals would be provided, nor any bed for him to sleep in, nor a fire to warm him, nor clothes for his back.

  We stood together in the backyard, he watching me silently while I told him all this. He’d grown a beard during that preceding few weeks, his hair had fallen to his shoulders, and he’d taken to going barefoot. “Yes, Father” was all he said when I finished. Then he turned, walked back into the house, gathered a few personal items in a plain cloth knapsack, and headed down the street, leaving only a brief note for his mother, its sneeringly ironic message clearly intended to render me one final injury, “Tell Father that I love him, and that I always will.”

  I didn’t see him again for eighteen years, though I knew that my wife maintained contact, sometimes even making long treks to visit whatever town he was passing through. She would return quite exhausted, especially in the later years, when her hair was gray and her once radiant skin had become so easily bruised that the gentlest pressure left marks upon it.

  I never asked her about her trips, never asked a single question about how her son was doing. Nor did I miss him in the least. And yet, his absence never gave me the relief I’d expected. For it didn’t seem enough, my simply throwing him out of the house. I had thought it might satisfy my ne
ed to get even with his father and my wife for blighting my life, forcing me to live a transparent and humiliating lie. But it hadn’t.

  Vengeance turned out to be a hungrier animal than I’d supposed. Nothing seemed to satisfy it. The more I thought of my “son,” the more I got news of his various travels and accomplishments, heard tales of the easy life he had, merely wandering about, living off the bounty of others, the more I wanted to strike at him again, this time more brutally.

  He had become quite well known by then, at least in the surrounding area. He’d organized a kind of traveling magic show, people said, and had invented an interesting patter to go along with his tricks. But when they went on to describe the things he said, it seemed to me that the “message” he offered was typical of the time. He was no different from the countless others who believed that they’d found the secret to fulfillment, and that their mission was to reveal that secret to the pathetic multitude.

  I knew better, of course. I knew that the only happiness that is possible comes by accepting how little life has to offer. But knowing something and being able to live according to that knowledge are two different things. I knew that I’d been wronged, and that I had to accept it. But I could never put it behind me, never get over the feeling that someone had to pay for the lie my wife had told me, the false son whose very existence kept that lie whirling madly in my brain. I suppose that’s why I went after him again. Just the fact that I couldn’t live without revenge, couldn’t live without exacting another, graver penalty.

  It took me three years to bring him down, but in the end it was worth it.

  She never knew that I was behind it. That for the preceding three years I’d silently waged my campaign against him, writing anonymous letters, warning various officials that he had to be watched, investigated, that he said violent things, urged people to violence, that he was the leader of a secret society pledged to destroy everything the rest of us held dear. By using bits of information gathered from my wife, I kept them informed about his every move so that agents could be sent to look and listen. He was arrogant and smug, and he had his real father’s confidence that he could get away with anything. I knew it was just a matter of time before he’d say or do something for which he could be arrested.

  I did all of that, but she never knew, never had the slightest hint that I was orchestrating his destruction. I realized just how fully I had deceived her only a few minutes after they’d finally peeled her away from his dead body and taken it away to prepare for burial. We were walking down the hill together, away from the place where they’d hung him, my wife muttering about how terrible it was, about how brutally the mob had taunted and reviled him. Such people could always be stirred up against someone like our son, she said, a “true visionary,” as she called him, who’d never had a chance against them.

  I answered her sharply. “He was a fraud,” I said. “He didn’t have the answer to anything.”

  She shook her head, stopped, and turned back toward the hill. It was not only the place where they’d executed him, but also the place where we’d first made love, an irony I’d found delicious as they’d led him to the execution site, his eyes wandering and disoriented, as if he’d never expected anything so terrible to happen to him, as if he were like his real father, wealthy and irresponsible, beyond the fate of ordinary men.

  A wave of malicious bitterness swept over me. “He got what he deserved,” I blurted out.

  She seemed hardly to hear me, her eyes still fixed on the hill, as if the secret of his fate were written on its rocky slope. “No one told me it would be like this,” she said. “That I would lose him in this way.”

  I grasped her arm and tugged her on down the hill. “A mother is never prepared for what happens to her child,” I said. “You just have to accept it, that’s all.”

  She nodded slowly, perhaps accepting it, then walked on down the hill with me. Once at home, she lay down on her bed. From the adjoining room, I could hear her weeping softly, but I had no more words for her, so I simply left her to her grief.

  Night had begun to fall, but the storm that had swept through earlier that day had passed, leaving a clear blue twilight in its wake. I walked to the window and looked out. Far away, I could see the hill where he’d been brought low at last. It struck me that even in the last moments of his life, he’d tried to get at me just one more time. In my mind I could see him glaring down at me, goading me in exactly the way he had before I’d kicked him out of the house, emphasizing the word Father when he’d last spoken to me. He’d known very well that this was the last time he’d ever talk to me. That’s why he’d made such a production of it, staring right into my eyes, lifting his voice over the noise of the mob so that everybody would be sure to hear him. He’d been determined to demonstrate his defiance, his bitterness, the depth of his loathing for me. Even so, he’d been clever enough to pretend that it was the mob he cared about. But I knew that his whole purpose had been to humiliate me one last time by addressing me directly. “Father,” he’d said in that hateful tone of his, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

  NAMELESS STONES

  My father was a doctor in the northern foothills of Alabama. He was a large, mild-mannered man who took great care with his patients, carefully explaining everything he did to them before he did it. By Depression standards, he had a well-heeled town practice which rarely ventured out into the mountain regions above our town.

  Most of his patients were local businessmen and professionals. Yet, for all that, my father still lived in what seemed to me a state of perpetual crisis. Night and day were pretty much indistinguishable in our house. Babies had to be born when they were ready, and people hurt or frightened came to him for help regardless of the hour.

  There weren’t many nurses in those days, and so after my mother died young, while attempting to have a second child, it was up to me to assist my father, to boil the water and arrange the instruments, to light the lanterns and put out the heavy cotton gauze and bandages, and at times to press down hard on someone’s arm or leg or chest to keep him from injurying himself while he thrashed about in pain.

  In those days medicine was a muscular profession—even for a nine-year-old boy.

  From time to time people from the rural areas would wander in, bringing their various sufferings to our door. I remember them well: large women in flour-sack dresses and men in soiled gray shirts. Their children seemed to be hardly dressed at all. They were brought only when their parents had to bring them, when they had been sick so long or so terribly that their parents had finally become frightened for them.

  Often too late.

  Often they died.

  Billie Withers died. He was a small, thin boy of four or five. His hands had a certain female delicacy to them, very soft and pale. Sometimes now when I reach over to take my wife’s hands, I remember his.

  The Withers were mountain people. And that is not to say they were stubborn or independent. It is not just to say they held to a code of silence or endurance.

  They were mountain people in the sense that mountain life was the only life they knew. The ridges and granite cliffs were their cosmos. They could not imagine a world beyond them.

  That in Istanbul muezzins called the people to prayer from lofty minarets or in Paris women danced barebreasted upon ornate revolving stages or in India people worshipped a god with an elephant’s head—it was not that these things were unknown to the Withers and their neighbors; they simply did not exist for them.

  What existed was the mountains, and they lived within their limited reaches like flowers captured in a vase. The farthest ridge was for them a beach, and all which lay beyond it an unknown, unknowable sea.

  John Withers brought his son Billie to our house on a cold December night. When I opened the door, he snatched his hat from his head and held it reverently in his hand. “Is Doctor Franklin here?” he asked.

  He was wearing a pair of denim overalls over a faded yellowish shirt w
ith a frayed collar. His face was drawn, worried. He looked as though he had lost a good deal of sleep.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Mr. Withers nodded shyly at the small boy cradled in his arms. “Mah boy’s in bad shape, I thank,” he said.

  I stepped back and asked him to come in.

  He hesitated, started to move, then drew back as if his boots had rooted to the porch. “I hate to trouble you so late.”

  I opened the door a bit farther. “It’s all right. I’ll get my father. Come on in.”

  Mr. Withers stepped through the door into the foyer and glanced timidly left and right. “I shore do hate to put you to this trouble.”

  “Just stay here,” I said. “My father will be out in a minute.”

  I walked quickly back to the kitchen where my father was having one of his hasty late-night snacks. He had gotten used to never going to bed before midnight during the early days of his practice and had never been able to readjust his hours.

  “Who’s at the door?” he asked.

  “A man with a little kid.”

  He pushed himself away from the table, still looking longingly at a half-eaten piece of chicken. “All right, go make sure my office is straightened up.”

  I ran to my father’s examining room and began putting things in their proper places. He never had been a neat man, and his proper material element seemed to be a kind of usable but ultimately incomprehensible chaos.

  His medicine bottles were deposited randomly throughout the office, and his instruments lay about on table tops, shelves and chairs. It was as if the logic which science brought to his mind had been imposed upon some older and less ordered beast.

  Billie was whimpering slightly when Mr. Withers brought him into the room.