L.A. Fisher - One Last Look

Chapter 24



The sand between my toes made my whole journey worth it.  It made life worth it and all of the struggles that led to this point worth it.  My life will be thought of as a fictitious tale; imagined by some jackass – possibly Frankie.

Kendra said humility is a part of heroism.

I’ve got humility in spades.

I think I do, anyway.

I walked across the beach with my feet just at the water’s edge.  The wakes of jet skis and speedboats splashed into my ankles and receded.  The air and the water were both cold, but not deceivingly.  It wasn’t one of those sunny clear blue days that looked like a scorcher but felt like an icebox.  Overcast skies and a subtle movement in the trees warned of the oncoming storm.  Days like this were better for me… more honest.  My life had been filled with ubiquitous bad weather.  Calamity road on the coat tails of calmness.  I grew to loath calmness.

I also learned to love myself.  Not in the way that I once did, in which I’m the only thing that matters, but in a way that I respected whom I had become.  For years it was difficult to look at myself in the mirror.  For years I was shy about letting my wife see my twisted body.  Without clothes, without my prosthesis, I felt vulnerable in a way that’s indescribable.  I was so ashamed that I couldn’t just be perfect for her.  It went beyond not being able to have a chiseled body and an athletic build, something that inspired lustful sex at a drop of a hat.  People saw me as a freak, so long as I acted the freak.  Kendra had to be seen with me, and I wanted women to look at her with envy because of what she had…  It took some time for me to feel valued.  Eventually, I just got over it.  I healed.  I went outside with my shirt off.

Kendra pointed to a star shaped scar on her lower abdomen, “I’m imperfect too!”

It looked like it had been put there on purpose.  A birthmark or a tattoo.

I smiled at her, “No.  No you’re not.”

She was sitting on a sandy bridge that crossed the top of a tunnel.  The tunnel looked like two huge hot tubs, complete with steps and seats, connected in the middle with a crawl space.  It was dug in such a way that the top of it was strong enough to support Kendra and our one and a half year old baby boy, Brian.  Kendra was applying a second layer of sunscreen on his face when she noticed that I was looking down at a patch of scar tissue that ran from my diaphragm to my pelvis.  I was merely reflecting on how I came to be, but every odd glance I gave myself ended up accompanied with some comforting words from my wife.  

We had one other son, Bebop, who was splashing around in the lake, punching at the waves that the boats made.  We tried to keep both him and his brother – did everything in our power to do so but it wasn’t possible.  I felt responsible for being unable to fix Rocksteady.  After all, I did burst his father’s head like a Gallagher watermelon while Rocksteady stood front row center.  I know he was emotionally disturbed prior to that event, but it couldn’t have helped matters much.  Fortunately, Bebop didn’t see or hear William’s death.  Though, something told me that he would have responded differently.  It was a burden lifted, not a game ended.  Bebop did alright going to group therapy meetings and he came out of his shell; started acting like a regular kid.  That didn’t work for his brother.

Rocksteady needed serious psychological reevaluation.  He progressively got more violent toward Bebop until we had to separate the two altogether.  After our first Christmas with the two boys we found Bebop’s pet dog in the trashcan one morning and decided it would be for the best if Rocksteady was institutionalized.  With him gone, his brother was finally able to behave like a real child.  Even Kendra started to love him… in her own way.

I stared off at I-40, a place in my past.  I half expected to see myself up there every time I looked.  A younger version of myself, wishing he had what I had, but not knowing that happiness doesn’t come easy.  You can’t just walk into a room or move to a new place and expect to find what you’re looking for right in front of you.  It has to be earned, fought for, and then defended.  A lot of my own blood spilled for me to get this house on Lake Eufala’s gorgeous beach.  It didn’t fall into my lap and I didn’t just find it.  Happiness was a reward for hard work, perseverance, patience, and ambition.  I didn’t know that a decade ago.  I thought I would just run into it.

Even the previous tenants I had seen all those years ago had to earn the house.  It had been built by hand by an elderly gentleman who lived there with his wife.  They had kids and grand kids now, and they kept the house as long as they did because the grandchildren enjoyed the lake so much.  Time changes things, though, and their grandkids stopped coming around so much.  In their twenties and thirties, they didn’t really have time away from school, girlfriends and spouses, work, and the like to actually go spend time with grandma and grandpa anymore.  Some would pass through on their way somewhere else, but not long enough to enjoy it.  Where I had seen joy had grown loneliness, and I was more than happy to pay for the house and see if I couldn’t bring joy there once again.  The elderly couple moved nearby, a house without stairs, big enough just for them.  Happiness was within them and they fought for it – it wasn’t this place.  I find myself accusing locations for having the power to change people.  Vissili’s to blame for that.  A place cannot bring happiness or spite, anger or pleasure, innocence or lawlessness… only people can earn those things.  Through their actions.  Through their inactions.

A lot of things happened through both my actions and my inactions.  It goes to show that I’m really not the central pivot of this universe… even when I don’t do anything, the world still turns.  I wasn’t as disappointed in learning this as one might have expected me to be.  Selflessness was thrown upon me and I embraced it whole-heartedly.

“Hey, Bebop!  Why don’t you come over here and dry off?” I looked to the darkened sky above us, “It’s about to rain, bud.  You don’t want to be in the water when it starts raining.”

He stopped hitting waves and looked at the clouds along with me.  Clouds had dissimilar meanings to us.  To me, they were a constant reminder of how life is.  Potential storm, potential thunder, potential disruption.  To Bebop they meant something else.  I don’t know what he saw, but it was worlds apart from what I saw.

Bebop climbed out of the water and ran to Kendra, hugging himself and shivering in the cold.  She put the baby down in the sand, still wrapped in his blanket, and tossed a towel to the oldest when he neared.  It wasn’t as motherly as wrapping the towel around him and helping him dry, but it was a step up from ignoring him.  I joined them and picked Brian up from the ground, brushing the dirt off of his blanket and tucking him under my right arm.  

Bebop then jumped into one of the holes I helped him dig and collected his new dog.  He wouldn’t let us name him Bug; already had a Bug, so instead he named him Rascal.  Wussiest goddamned dog I’d ever seen.

Bebop wasn’t my child.

The twins had been Will’s all along.  I knew they weren’t mine before the blood test results came in the mail.  I had to legally adopt Bebop to keep custody.

He would never know that, though.

He needed to feel like he belonged somewhere.  He needed to be a part of a family; to be loved and cared for regardless of what the world threw his way.  He needed to learn that life doesn’t always fight fair and that when it doesn’t he needed to fight back.  He needed to learn that, while green chilé looks gross, it is one of the most delicious things he would ever eat…

What better person to teach him than me?

“Will the tunnel still be here tomorrow, dad?”

“I hope so; so long as it doesn’t rain too hard.”

“I hope it does.”

“Why?”

“That way we can make it again!” He let Rascal down and flashed me a smile.  Will’s smile.  

Kendra led the way toward the house and left me a few steps behind her with the kids.  I rested my prosthetic hand on Bebop’s shoulder and we three boys followed after her, walking toward the house after I had one last look at the bridge.

Nobody watched over us.

Rain fell.