Tag: uplifting

Poetry-Thing Thursday: Ruminations

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

When of Death I speak,
your senses need not feel weak,
nor falter as if meek.
For these are Ruminations,
those which I keep,

locked away and out of sight,
lest I wish to incite,
a brawl, a melee, some primal fight.
So use your intuitions,
lead with only your own light.

For there may be gods or devils or kings,
none of which to my liking.
And though disagreements may be striking,
always resist the temptations,
to become the brutal viking.

Instead, live and laugh and love and die,
but fear nothing that gives no reply.
For if, with an end you must comply,
remember the best of conditions:
you were born in this world, alone, don’t cry.

To change the situation?
Accept your feeble station;
80 years or so with earth as your location.
So in my belabored loquation
I bid you luck and love, all of life’s libation.

Poetry-Thing Thursday: Wisely Depraved

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

What can I say?
What is with this day–
words of wisdom,
wisely depraved.

I’m sick of doubt,
relentless sorrow–
being locked out,
never seeing tomorrow.

Why do we run?
To escape the sun?
Where can we go?
To an old film show?

Who is the one,
called to come,
where’s their name?
Lost to the sun.
“The words of wisdom,
all but forgotten.
Will they be remembered
in the final sum?

It moves with a singular certainty
as if all is meant to pass,
Time, the great uniformity,
A shepherd of lad and lass.

We are all one,
under the sun,
we all become,
once frightened, undone.

But stars sing a song,
ever distant, never wrong:
Won’t you come, come along,
help yourself,
help someone,
avoid the prong?

We all feel pleasure,
we all know pain
and in the end,
we all lose the game.

When will we see?
When will it reign?
there can be no pleasure,
without pain
That it’s the only reason,
for the rain.

In the end we all succumb.
Yes, an end, will surely come–
end of light, of dark and then some,
end of days, lost to flight, all progress to be undone.

Short Story: The Power

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The Power

Harlan Mackie was the thirty-five year old front-man for Twisted Ballistix, a band that had already seen its hay-day and obligatory fifteen minutes of fame. Like Most, Harlan and the rest of the group had squandered their fame in their youthful lust for money, drugs, and women. Now, pushing forty, they’d done and seen more than most, and tired of the scene. But none of Ballistix was quite so burnt out as “Mac” Mackie.

He’d done all of the things the others had and then some; blown cash, toured foreign countries and waters, and soiled his share of women. Through it all, he’d aged each day with more weariness than the last. Long before Ballistix was featured in No Moss, the counter-culture music rag that dribbled on everyone’s reputation, he’d seen their decline on the horizon. Only Mac predicted their shift from 80’s glam-rock to blues-inspired jams and graveled crooning would see their popularity wane. Even when it did, he was the only one to mind– maybe, to notice.

While Shift (the drummer), John, and Jake, (bass-guitarist and guitarist respectively) had taken to the change with ease, Mac still clung to the delusions of the high vocals of the Glam-era. His voice begged to differ, had dropped octaves since his youth. He knew what was happening, couldn’t stop it with all the fame in the world; he was getting old, washed up.

He sat in the green room of the Tower-Blade theater in Chicago, hometown of the Blues. The others of the group had already left for the side-stage, there gear waiting for them on-stage. Mac knew the way there without having to be directed. They’d played Tower-Blade twice before, once during the glam-era, and once immediately following Ballistix’s reincarnation. He’d been left to his warm-ups, as usual, given privacy to psych himself up.

Instead, he psyched himself out. He hunched over the lighted bureau back-stage to stare at himself in the mirror. His eyes were deep purple, baggy. His long-hair, already peppered gray, was ratty from more restless nights than he cared to recall. There was nothing more to be done about it, he was finished, through– not even willing to finish out the Tower-Blade gig. Don Mclean had been right; there was a day when the music died, even if Mac couldn’t quite place it anymore.

He tore a scrap of paper from a pad, scrawled over it. The words themselves weren’t important, but the gist was that he was finished, gone. He grabbed a roll of duct-tape from a road-kit, tore off a strip, slapped it atop the note and smacked them both against the mirror. He grabbed his leather jacket, long a staple of his life– even before the Glam-era of eye-liner and finger-less gloves that had accompanied it and helped to make him a star.

He hesitated. He wasn’t a star anymore. He was a has-been, a burnt-out caricature of himself that he doubted anyone would miss. The music was gone. What else could matter to him?

He tossed the jacket over the back of a chair, turned away. He made it to the door before a deep baritone called out to him.

“’Ey Mac, you forgot your jacket.”

Mac whirled ’round, petrified at the lanky figure of a black man, roughly his age. Mac blinked twice. His mind swam. If he’d been stoned, he’d’ve sworn he was hallucinating the legend of John Robertson, Blues-God of Chicago that’d been one of the tour-de-force performers during the genre’s creation.

He took a few steps over room, his black suit-jacket and tie pressed and loose beneath black fedora. He had the deep-set eyes of Robertson, even the gravelly baritone, but it couldn’t have been him– Robertson’d been dead for thirty years, maybe more. He’d had a mishap with an especially potent strand of Heroin, made it to the hospital just in time to die in the ER. Everyone one that’d played the Tower-Blade– indeed, anyone that played the Blues– knew of Robertson’s death. The OD’d started in this very room, at an after-party for one of Robertson’s “Welcome Home” performances. It was the last time Tower-Blade had let anyone throw after-parties in the building.

Even so, the very reflection of Robertson in his prime seemed to make its way toward Mac. The latter’s jaw was slacked above his stony muscles and bones. Robertson extended a hand to the leather jacket, lifted it off the chair, presented it to Mac.

“Can’ go on without’cha your threads, man,” he said. The Robertson look-alike– as it had to have been– met Mac’s eyes, “You ain’t lookin’ so hot, Mac-Knife. What’s the digs?”

Mac’s mouth closed just enough for him to shake his head, “You… You’re…”

“Dead?” He asked under the brim of his fedora. He laid the jacket back over the chair, “Yeah, I s’pose I am ’bout now. What is this, ninety-eight?”

“Oh-three,” Mac said.

“Damn,” Robertson said as he removed his fedora, began to traipse the room with an upward gaze. “The new millennium. Never thought I’d see it.”

Mac blinked, “You didn’t. You were dead in seventy-three. OD’d in…”

Robertson met his eyes again. His words were slow, a serious rise to one of his brows, “In this very room.”

“You’re a… a ghost then, right?” Mac said, in disbelief of his own words.

Robertson’s signature, crooked grin appeared for a moment. He put a long, chocolate finger to his lip, looked to the floor as he stepped over to Mac’s chair. His hand fell to the chair-back, and he crossed his feet in a lean, began to gesture widely, then in small sweeps, with the hat in his other hand.

“Whad’ya know about science, Mac-Knife? Physics, Biology, space-time ‘n all that?”

Mac shrugged, shook his head, too torn between disbelief and utter shock. Robertson straightened enough to step past the chair, set his hat at the bureau in front of it, then lean against its side with a hand in the pocket of chinos, the jacket draped around it.

His other hand illustrated as he explained, “Ya’ see Mac, there’re these moments in time, in our lives, where we just sorta’ fit into place. Physicists call this a Nexus, it’s a point where a bunch of things coalesce– sort’a snow-ball together, to roll down hill in one big conglomeration together.”

Mac blinked, swallowed, “Uh… okay.”

“I can see your confused, but I’ll simplify it for ya’,” he drew the other hand from his pocket, gestured wide to the room. “There’s three events in my life that occurred in this room, that changed its course forever. Bein’ the man that I was, it also changed history. At each’a those events, you can trace that snowball’s path through history to the present, through all the people that were effected through me– My death was one’uv ’em.” He dropped the extra hand again, “Now, the other two, were quite a bit more subtle. They weren’t the kind of thing you see too easily, ‘less you know what to look for.”

Robertson hesitated, slid his other hand in his pocket, scratched at a heel with the opposite foot.

“Now listen close, Mac-Knife, ’cause one’a these concerns you directly, and the other’ll make you understand why. The first, is somethin’ that’s brought me here to ‘ya today.” Mac gave a small blink as if prepared for Robertson to continue. He drew his left hand from his pocket, began to gesture between them, “Good. You’ll be needin’ that curiosity.”

He went silent, sank into memory that brought on an old vernacular that immediately swept Mac into the past with it. Robertson began, “Ya’ see, I was a Blues-man, one’a the first. I knew all the other boys when they were the firsts too. Me ‘n the Kings, Muddy, and John Lee, and more than you could name; we was the soul– the heart of a poor-folk taught all their lives they wasn’t worth nothin more’n the sweat on their brow. But ya’ see, we disagreed with that notion, ‘n like the ancient troubadours, we didn’t know nothin’ more than to sing about it with screams ‘n cries from the only instruments that knew it better than us.”

Mac suddenly felt the sweat bead on his brow, heard the distant sounds of wailing guitars that cried out over the throaty shouts of young blues-men trying to find their place in the world.

As if Robertson felt it too, he commented to the effect, “Ya’ see, thing is, back in them days, we didn’t have a place. Nobody’d heard’a the blues, and no-one gave a thought to the poor-folk ‘less they’d had to step over ’em in the street. ‘N all of sudden, here we were– ‘fore the Brits and their invasion, the rock-pop scene, hell, even ol’ Chuck ‘n his duck-walkin’– screamin’ for someone to help us find our place in the world.”

Mac finally found his words over the sounds of past Blues-men that wailed in his head, “But you’re a legend, John. You always were.”

Robertson gave a giggly laugh, his pearly whites bright as ever in his brown mug, “Maybe I was, but no one starts out that way, Mac-Knife. Hell, you know that better’n anyone. Me ‘n the boys? We was trash, not fit to shine the shoes’a the folks we made rich with our suff’rin’.” He nodded to himself with a look at his feet, “Hmm… yeah. Yeah. That’s what we was. ‘N you see, that’s where the first of the events’a my life comes to play. Year was… uh.. ’63, I believe,” he did a mental calculation. “Forty-years to the day, if I’m not mistaken.”

Mac knew the year, “’63? That was right before all the marches and protests.”

Robertson was pleased, “Tha’s right. One’a the first times black-folk rose together, said they wasn’t gonna’ take it anymore. ‘N you know what happened here, that night?”

Max shook his head, “I know you were here.”

Robertson’s brow gave a buck, “I was. ‘N I wasn’t.” He removed both hands from his pocket, “Ya’ see, we was just workin’ on carvin’ ourselves out a spot in the world when it went ‘n got crazy on us. All’uva sudden, people were risin’ in the streets, throwin’ their own cries and pleas. We didn’ think they needed us no more. Or at least… I didn’t.” He put a finger to his mouth again, waggled it outward for a few turns, “Nah, I was wrong ’bout that. ‘N I knew it then. Ya’ see, me ‘n one’a my guys– cat by the name of Tempo-Jones– called ‘im Jonesy in those days– had a sit before the show. ‘N all we could hear in the background was the roarin’a the crowd.”

Mac heard it too. It wasn’t in his head this time, it was the audience waiting for Ballistix to take the stage, start a night of screaming blues. Mac shuddered, ready to bolt.

Robertson held him in place with a smile, “Yeah, that was how I felt. See, I didn’ think then, what I know now: It takes a legend to lead a crowd, be their… their representative. ‘N the best man to do that’s the one that can be heard over their own roar to scream for ’em.”

Mac’s eyes narrowed, “I don’t understand.”

Robertson nodded, “I ‘spect not, but you will.” He slid his hands back into his pockets, wiggled a foot along the heel of his wayfarer, “It was ten years to the day that I shot-up a dose a dope that made me soar so high I didn’t come back down. Thirty-years to the day, as it is now. Those are two’a three events that I was talkin’ about. The first, ‘case you missed it, was me realizin’ that the people needed me to cry out for ’em. The last, was me havin’ done my job. The Brits’d already invaded. Chicago was a Blues town. ‘N the poor, black-folk’d had their say ‘n now people were listenin.’ They didn’ need me no more, ‘n I didn’ need to be creatin’ what me ‘n the boy’s’d created anymore. I was finished with the world, and it in turn’d finished with me.”

Mac shook his head, “That’s not true, John. People still love you. You’re still a legend. Your work still affects people, it changed the world.”

Robertson waggled his finger at Mac with a smile, “See, now you’re catchin’ on, boy. You’re getting’ there, but you’re not there yet. Ya’ see, cats like me, we got somethin’ more in our veins– more’n blood, more’n soul, more than anything you can think to name. I always called it “The Power.” The power to get up on that stage, ‘n wail the blues with my git-box, ‘n echo the cries’a of the people for them– ‘n I did it louder’n meaner than any other man could’a.”

Mac nodded, “That’s what I mean. You are a legend. The people still need you.”

“As an icon, a legend,” Robertson agreed. “That’s how they need me now.” He scratched at a cheek, presented a few fingers through the air as he explained, “’Ya see, that third event that I was tellin’ ya ’bout? That’s what’s happenin’ right now, right here.” Mac squinted at him. Robertson cocked his head to one side, examined him for a minute. “Lem’me ask you somethin’ Mac-Knife; in all the years you been performin’ how many times you lost time? Been so in the groove you ain’t sure where it ends and you begin? I’d wager it’s more’n you know.”

Mac looked to the floor, thought about it. His eyes returned to Robertson’s with a shake of his head and a shrug, “Yeah, so? That’s what we do, innit? We try to get lost in that groove, take everyone with us?”

Robertson’s smiled weighted his cocked head further to the side, “Yep. You’re right.”

“So, what’s your point?”

Robertson’s head kept its tilt, but his arms crossed and his eyes gleamed, “You know the power I was talkin’ about. I know you do. We all do. That’s why we’re in this business.” Mac made a half nod, as if to affirm Robertson’s words. “And you know, that power, it’s somethin’ none of us can explain. Somethin’ we don’t quite control. It just works through us. Works us over sometimes, right?” Again, Mac nodded. Robertson’s head straightened, “It was ’71, two years before I collapsed from that shot’a dope, that I was leanin’ in the very spot I’m in now. I was ramped up for a gig, ready to scream the blues, when the power overtook me. It was better’n any dope I’d ever had, ‘n I suddenly found myself here, with you, with all’a the knowledge I’d ever need to make my point– like I’d lived more’n forty years in seconds.”

Mac shook his head, confounded, “No, that can’t be. You’ve been dead … and this… I just, I don’t understand.”

Robertson smiled, “This is one’a them Nexus points, Mac.” He finally straightened from the bureau, “Ya’ see, I’m bound to give up my power at some point. No man on this earth can defeat death. He’s a miserable bastard that hunts us down no matter how long it takes ‘im. But the kind’a power I got, the kind you’re gonna’ have; it can’t just appear. It’s gotta’ be handed over.”

Robertson stepped over to Mac. He stepped back on instinct, “No, I’m done. I’m leaving.”

The old blues man met his eyes, “Tell me what’s happening in your world. War, right? Lot’s’a poverty? The sick ‘n dying screamin’ out for someone to listen? Someone to echo, loud as they can, so the others can hear? To use their power for good? Isn’t that why you got in this game? To be the Tom-Cat, loved by all ’cause’a the screamin’ you did for ’em while they were screamin’ for you?”

Mac grit his teeth. He wasn’t sure why he’d gotten into it anymore. For that matter, he wasn’t sure of much, except that he couldn’t keep living as husk, a has-been, a burn out.

Robertson lifted his hand, placed it on Mac’s shoulder, “All you been lookin’ for’s a way outta’ your predicament. ‘N now you have it. Sing the blues, ‘n feel it.” He jabbed a finger into Mac’s chest, “Feel it. If not for you, then for the people that need to be heard. You’ll be a legend. One the world needs. You’ll change history, just like I did. Like the boys did with me. All you gotta’ do’s accept the offer.”

Mac steeled himself with a deep breath; everything Robertson had said, everything he’d felt himself, all of his worries and cares seemed to hinge on his answer now. It was as though he’d been shown the way to revival, all he had to do was take the steps along its path. He wasn’t sure he could. But he wasn’t sure he could turn it down either.

He bit at his lips, took a deep breath, “What do I do?”

Robertson smiled, lowered his hand, “Well, that’s the question, ain’t it?” He turned around slowly to grab his hat, “We all asked it then; what do we do to find our place, our way? Truth is, we had to carve it out. ‘N we did.” He lifted Mac’s jacket from the chair, “I expect, like we did, you’ll figure it out. You just gotta’ get there.” He handed it over, “Don’t forget your jacket, Mac.”

He extended an apprehensive hand, retrieved the jacket from Robertson, their eyes locked, “Wh-what if I can’t do it?”

“My momma’ always said, ya’ never know ’til ‘ya try.” He glanced sideways with a bittersweet look, returned his eyes to Mac’s, “I kept that in my heart, followed it all my life. Who knows– maybe you can too.”

He lifted his hat to Mac’s chest, handed it over, and stepped away. Mac whirled to follow him, “Wait! John! How do I do it?”

Robertson was halfway across the room, smoky and transparent looking. He glanced back with a crooked smile, tipped an invisible hat forward, and disappeared.

“Mac?” A voice called behind him; it was the equally aged figure of Jake, his Paul around his neck, waiting to be plugged into scream. He gripped it in one hand beneath a plectrum, “You warmed up?”

Mac stared for a second, then looked to the hat, “Y-Yeah. I’m coming.”

Jake squinted at him, “Where’d you get the hat?”

Mac was breathless, “John Robertson.”

Jake snorted, “Pft, yeah, alright joker. C’mon, we gotta’ show to play.”

Mac slipped into the leather jacket, took a deep breath, then set the hat atop his head. A rush of power floored him, coursed through his veins as his ears honed in on the sounds of the distant crowd. He suddenly understood. He reached forward, tore the note off the mirror, balled it up, and tossed it away. He turned for the stage, disappeared from Tower-Blade’s green room.

Short Story: The Meek Shall Inherit

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The Meek Shall Inherit

Robert Crumb was born on the east-side of Bacatta, Michigan; a city once plagued by gangs, corruption, and economic depression and desperation. His life began during the worst of it, during what some had begun referring to as “The Fall”– not the autumn kind, the hitting-your-ass-on-the-ground kind. Bacatta had done so famously, and stayed that way for many years. For most of those years, Robert attended school in the central, downtown district that was later abandoned and overrun with the destitute and criminal. It was during these years that he met the future of humanity that would eventually form those aforementioned societal slack-jaws.

Robert’s troubles began at Levin Elementary school, long ago established by a family of farmers whom hoped to help the blossoming city find its feet. For Robert, all it did was cause him grief, especially in the form of Phillip O’Dell.

Robert was a small, geek-ish sort, whom followed the rules to a T, but understandably, lacked the formal press-and-dress of his more-fortunate peers. Even before the nicknames rubby-crumbs, crummy-rubbert, and bread-boy, Robert’s old, hand-me-down clothing doomed him. His mother was a seamstress by trade, and his clothes were old, tattered, and worn. The few that weren’t, had been out of style for decades.

By contrast, Phillip was a brick-wall of a boy; nice hair, new clothes, and lots of friends. Robert learned these things quickly, as Phil flaunt them in his face whilst singling him out. Even despite the obvious downturn for Bacatta, Phillip’s Dad made a killing at BPD. Robert didn’t mind; the divide between them was cosmetic, skin-deep. But Phillip did mind, and he took great pleasure in making everyone else mind it too. Crummy-rubbert stuck, lasted all the way through middle-school.

The few friends Robert found poked fun at him, however lovingly, but ever a pacifist, he took it in stride. Phillip despised it. He lashed out, bigger and meaner than ever. He beat Robert regularly, his words broken through fists of adolescent fury, “Crummy rubbert… poor family…. too broke to care…. about their broke son.”

Phillip reveled in the glory of others’ suffering.

Despite these routine “meetings of the minds” Robert trudged onward. He sank deeper into school-work, his few, minor friendships, then eventually, depression. All the while Phillip’s family grew richer, defended his worst troubles, and ignored the lesser-ones.

As high-school approached, Robert and Bacatta were worse than ever, but something changed in them both. Roberts’ father, an accountant for the city on a dismal salary, took a high-paying position at a company called Bio-something– Robert never really cared, he was just happy for dad. It was only after Bacatta began to pick-up, and thus its inhabitants, that Robert saw the true shift: Phillip, an ever-present threat and nuisance, suddenly shrank into the background. What were once daily encounters became weekly, then monthly. Soon enough, Phillip O’Dell descended into obscurity altogether, taking crummy-rubbert with him.

Twenty years after “The Fall,” and near half-a-decade since Robert had thought of O’Dell, he’d become a man. Without constant torment, he’d made it through High-school with high-grades, and even a girlfriend or two. He garnered promising scholarships from both in and out of state colleges, left home to attend Oakton State University’s Bachelor of Sciences program to study Computer Science; for there were few things Robert always loved more than computers, games, and math.

As he stepped from a cab along a side-street, a voice at-once both sparked his memory and chilled his spine. He glanced sideways to see a homeless man, haggard, emaciated, and begging for a few paces down the road. Even beneath countless layers of dirt, grime, and mottled head and facial hair, Phillip was unmistakable.

For a moment, Robert stood transfixed by the shell of a man that had once been his bully, his tormentor. For most, this would be a moment of triumph. For Robert, ever-the-pacifist, it was one of sorrowful epiphany.

During high-school Robert learned of Bacatta’s true underbelly, its true history. What had once been a high-grade metropolis had been forced to poverty from the loss of a major company and supporter of its economy. Robert’s own father had been part of this company– pharma-something, he’d never bothered to remember– and it went down in flames after a major scandal with its Board of Directors.

Even now, the city was still picking itself up. Part of the revitalization also included cleaning up the police-force’s corruption, but only now– as a college-going man bound for a nearby-cafe– did Robert remember Officer O’Dell, Phillip’s father. The connection wasn’t difficult; Officer O’Dell was a corrupt cop, the kind that took kick-backs for anything he could to keep his family glitzed and glamoured in otherwise dire times. Phillip’s own disappearance even made sense now. But to see him slouched against a brick-wall in Oakton, ragged, torn, and destitute, broke Robert’s heart.

Robert weaved through the crowd toward Phil, his feet compelled forward through the stream of noon-day passersby that flowed around him. He stood before the broken, homeless.

He raised a hand, rasped a word, “Change?”

Robert’s eyes filled with a melange of emotion that Phil must have missed.“Ph-Phillip? Phillip O’Dell?”

The broken man’s eyes rose, widened, “Robert?”

He gave a single, slow nod, “What’re you doing here, man?”

Phillip’s lower lip trembled. He slid up the wall, shaking his head. Tears edged into his eyes, “Are– Are you–”

“Real?” Robert asked with a step toward him. “Yeah, Phil, it’s me.”

His withered, husk of a body heaved a sob, “My god!”

Robert’s heart split in two, “Hey man, it’s alright.” He put an arm around him, “You hungry? C’mon, my apartment’s just down the street. I’ll fix you something.”

Phillip sobbed the two blocks to the apartment building, his clouded mind wracked, and his body directed solely by Robert’s firm grip. The stink of an adolescent life on the street permeated the otherwise smoggy air and filled the hallway to the apartment door. It only subsided long enough for the meal that Robert cooked in silence, his movements slow, thoughtful. Phillip’s tears followed their tempo with a pervasive trickle, ceasing as the two sat to eat.

The silence had its fill between them, gorging itself on the profundity of the moment. Phillip’s mouth trembled. His hand failed the weight of the soup spoon. It clamored with a perilous ring that gave way to Phillip’s rasping voice.

“Wh-why… why would you…”

He trailed off. Robert knew where he was headed, “What happened to you, Phil?”

His head shook, flung tears across his cheeks, “I don’t even… I don’t remember.”

“Don’t you have family? Someone you can stay with or– what happened Phil?”

Phillip O’Dell swallowed hard, choked on the bits and pieces of his life that he could recall. His voice split into occasional, hacking coughs. “Dad was … one of the cops they busted. They put him in jail– he’s … still there. Mom, couldn’t handle the pressure of work, ‘n me, ‘n… dad. She…. she showed herself out not long after.”

“You’ve be alone all this time?” He nodded. “Then how’d you end up in Oakton? Your family were locals.”

Phillip gave a wracking cough into his hand, his withered figure still trembling afterward, “I ran away… just ended up here. I’m … not sure how anymore.”

“Didn’t you ever try to … get help, or find work? I mean, have you always been—”

“No. I … I was an angry kid, Rob, you know that,” he replied, avoiding Robert’s gaze. “I hated people… lower than me, how could I… react to being lower than myself?”

“So all this time you’ve been living like this?”

He nodded. “I stole for a long time. Got caught. Ended up worse-off.”

Phillip descended into a heavy fit of coughing that shook Robert’s chest, frayed his nerves. He tried to word his sympathy, his tone shaky, “Phil, I’ve gotta’ admit.” He wrung his hands. “You were a mean kid, but… some kids are like that. I’d’ve never thought– this isn’t right, man, you need some help.”

Phillip’s coughing fit ended with sobs, “So many things I did… I deserved this. I’ve… regretted everything I said and done for so many years. I took out my own self-hate on you.”

“Self-hate?”

He choked back a sob, “I was never happy. Dad was a drunk. Mom was… always cheating or fighting with Dad. When it came down, I wasn’t sad. I was angry. That’s when I was at my worst. I saw you so happy, even with all the struggle you– I-I couldn’t break your spirit. And It broke mine.”

Robert shook his head, “Phil, it wasn’t like that–”
“Yes it was, Rob,” he interrupted respectfully. “I know I hurt your feelings, but it wasn’t nearly what it could have been. I’ve seen that on the streets; kids who didn’t… have what you had. They let guys like me get to them, force them down. I’ve never regretted anything more than what I’ve done to you. I’ve beaten myself up the last half-decade for it– if I’d stopped, thought about it for even a second, I’d’ve had to recognize it was me that was the problem. And I wouldn’t’ve– wouldn’t’ve ended up… like this!”

Phil sobbed again. His chest heaved. He coughed phlegm into a frail, shaky hand. Robert watched, lost for words, searched for someway to calm the mass of sorrow across the table.

“Phil… Phil, listen man. If you were given the chance, I mean really given the chance to change things, would you?”

Phil’s face wavered, “Rob, I’ve got felonies ‘n I haven’t–”

“No, Phil, that’s not what I’m asking,” he interjected. “I’m asking, would you accept help?”

He seemed to consider the question for a long moment. His tears stilled, though his chest rose and fell with piercing wheezes. “Yeah. Yeah, I would Rob, but … I can never forgive myself for.”

Rob interrupted, “Look man, sometimes, we can’t forgive ourselves because that’s not where we need it from. Sometimes, we need it from the people we’ve wronged.”

Phil’s eyes glistened he struggled to follow, “What’re you talkin’ about Rob?”

Robert explained with a slow, rhythmic tongue, “Look Phil, like you said, I’ve had a lot behind me to help hold me up all these years. I can’t be angry with you now. And I was never really angry then. But I do understand now. I can forgive you, but I can’t just do it. Otherwise, it won’t mean as much to either of us.”

Phil’s face was blank, a result of confusion, “What’re you saying? That you forgive me?”

Robert’s head tilted sideways, “Kind of. Look man, if you’re willing to work for it, I can forgive you. But there’s a lot there, and the only way it seems worth it’s if you agree to make it worth it.”

“How?”

“Get yourself together man, I’ll help, but… well, think of it this way: You agree, and at the end of that road, you’re forgiven. In the meantime, you’ll clean up, maybe find some work– something you wanna’ do with your life.”

Phil’s tears returned, a visible thirst on his lips, “You wanna’ help me?”

He grimaced, “Phil man, I hate seeing you like this, but I gotta’ know you’re really different– inside I mean, you know? What’s the point if you might turn ’round and be the same way again.”
Phil understood at last, “You can forgive me, ‘n you wanna’ help, but you wanna know I won’t end up the same.”

Robert nodded, gave a half smile, “Yeah.” He stood from the table, Phil in front of him, “It won’t be easy, but… well, neither was what happened. It was a lotta’ years, man.”

Phil nodded, hope gleaming in his eyes. Robert gave him a tight hug, lingered to foster hope. He pulled away, hands on Phil’s shoulders, and gave a sideways tilt of his head, “Go shower up, there’s a trimmer under the sink. I’ll find you some clothes and we’ll go get’chu a haircut. You had enough to eat right?”

Phil’s mouth quivered with a smile, “Rob, I don’t know what to say…”

“Just go shower up, man. You don’t need to say anything.”

Phil half-turned, hesitated, “I think I understand why they say meek’ll inherit the Earth, Rob.” Robert’s brow pinched with confusion. Phil smiled, “No matter what you do to ’em– no matter how bad you are, they never lose their compassion.”

Robert’s face sketched agreement as the boy, Phillip O’Dell– his one time bully– disappeared into the man Phil O’Dell.