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Parting Words

It might not have been evident at face value, but my dad was a sensitive man. Not everyone got the privilege of seeing that side of him, but beneath his quiet and reserved exterior was a tender soul full to overflowing with emotion, well acquainted with sadness and regret but also great joy and love. I’m thankful now that my main example of masculinity was a man who could cry watching The Notebook and also knew how to replace a car radiator. He taught me time and again there was no weakness in compassion and in doing so broke another of many generational curses in my family. People keep telling me how much I remind them of him. The most I can say is that I’m trying.  As I write this I am 33 years old, my wife Gabby and I just celebrated our 1-year wedding anniversary, and in a matter of days we’re going to be bringing a baby into the world. Somehow right in the middle of all of this, my dad has died. To have this kind of tragedy coincide with so much good has overwhelmed me, and I ...
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Schism

He remembered waking in the crisp night air to his father snoring and his brother face-up beside him dead asleep. His eyes opened to the inside of the plastic tent, the crinkling of it with the softest disturbance of wind. Lying on an air mattress and beneath it the bare dirt and grass ground of southeast mountain country. Camping, yes. A long weekend right after the end of tenth grade. Memorial day, it must've been. And still it was near freezing. Teeth clattering and fingernails blue even this late in May. In this remote wilderness, this high precipice.  He recalled some subversive curiosity animating him that night. Considered an arbitrary whim of hormonal post-adolescence, perhaps something else. He’d gently risen from the air mattress and tiptoed to unzip the tent. A slight rustling from dad but nothing more. Hunched over he stretched his legs in long circumspect strides over him and his brother and stepped outside in not much more than his socks and orange sweatshirt into a n...
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Three Hunters

They slid down the service ladder one at a time into the deep below. At work with their power tools and crowbars they broke open the rusted hatch with a tremulous cough that echoed into the breach. Landing on the metal floor and training the barrels of their weapons to the abject darkness of the keep before them. Three. Three to face the long and uncharted journey as one. The last to land did so with a thud, the hull of his body broad, square, and itself metallic. An engineered carapace housing an artificial intelligence no inferior to any organic. The lion's share of their supplies he bore on his back, his shoulders stamped in auburn the designation RDD. The second was a small and lithe creature who upon entering readied a machine which suspended in midair in front of them and spoke to a weathered terminal she operated. The drone would map the surroundings as they traveled and it hummed with a light that illuminated especially the white linen wrap she wore about her neck. In the d...
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Enemy

My dad told me he once wanted to die. He said he prayed to God to relieve him of his suffering, one way or the other, but it turned out there was much more for him yet in store. There were days that multiplied into weeks and into months. There was solitary confinement in a hospital bed unable to move, to speak, to eat, to even breathe. What imagery of fire and brimstone could compare to the reality of the hell that was present there in that sterile room, his own body a prison cell. Such overwhelming loneliness for a mind caged in fear and despair. How could I imagine what that must've been like. It would be an insult to even try.  Dad couldn't quite figure out where he caught it from, the virus. It almost didn't matter. You can take every advised precaution, follow every sanctioned guideline, and it not make any difference. This microscopic enemy had traveled halfway across the world and somehow found its way to him. An enemy we all underestimated. Before this I thought I w...
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Two Rivers

Before the flow of the river began there was a faint rainbow visible in the wake of a white wing of lakewater spurting from a port opened in the dam. Below it, at a distance, fishermen waded in knee-high boots with their sons and lures snatching up the bluegill and bass that had washed out of Percy Priest. Above there was a bridge dividing the river and the lake and the cars that drove across it were privy to the curvature of the stream as it ducked underneath the interstate overpass and the immeasurable beauty of the lake at dawn, when it seemed the sun had melted into the spangled waters with a glory nearly too radiant to behold. The wind blew amid the churn of the dam. Flocks of birds at play in the surf. He stood in the grass and watched them for a while. Leadeth me beside the raging maelstrom. Upon a wooden bench in the field were etched old carvings, messages, signatures. "NO FATE", one says. More still were spray-painted under the overpass, where the trail just begins....
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Isaac

You heard His voice, you did not argue At the crest of Moriah were we alone It was called worship, called sacrifice Did you walk the road observed In hesitation, trepidation, doubt With fear and fear of the Lord Were the commands of His lips Treasured more than my life His blessing, His promise forsaken Yes He is holy, immovable His ways above, inscrutable Give Him your firstborn Give Him your heart, your soul, your mind Give Him what He's owed He is the unquenchable fire While you held the knife The wood was put upon my shoulders Carrying your burden across I never wanted to foreshadow To signify, to symbolize Some eventual grace And only a messenger to stay your hand And a ram more innocent than I You could not fail Him, could not fail For His love is abounding And His mercies everlasting Give Him your scapegoat Give Him your guilt, your shame, your pride Give Him what you need He'll fill the insatiable pyre What blood was required But ...
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1921

There was gray smoke aswirl round the train station and heavy fog with the odor of coal through which itinerants came and went, departed and boarded. As he stepped onto the curb a sensation of aimlessness struck him suddenly, one that he hadn't felt so acutely before in his life. The railway commute had been long and interconnected. Three stops at least and many days between them. It had been well over a month, he knew, since he'd bore witness to that blue infinity called the Pacific. Well over two, come to think of it. When in transit the laws of perceived time and space become rubbery and opaque. To sit back and relax and sleep and do nothing but read and think while the wheels beneath you whisk you away to a fixed, predestined point. It was effortless, and he loved that about it. He was one well acquainted with travel, you could say, and the railway was his favorite permutation of it. He'd become accustomed to living upon it, erecting a kind of camp that was stationary a...
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