All Things Are New
“What do you see when you look at me?”
David saw the old steelworker frame, the calloused palms, the
folded in cauliflower ears, and the prison ink peeking out from Harlo’s
unbuttoned shirt and took a deep sip of his coffee.
“Honestly,” he said, setting the cup back on the table, “I see a
guy about to ask me for a church donation so he can say I volunteered the money
instead of getting mugged.”
Harlo laughed, a deep, steam-engine bellowing he tried to control
echoing in the confines of the diner. “That’s a good one,” he added two more
sugar packets and another creamer to his own cup and stirred it. “If I was
still scheming, I’d probably take that and run with it, now that I’ve got the
look to pull it off.”
“Did you have too many motorcycle leathers in your younger days?”
“That, and cocaine eyes. A blind preacher, people will buy,” Harlo
started, “but a snowblind one? That just makes people angry. Insults
their intelligence, I guess, some junkie thinking they would fall for something
like that.”
“You hear stories though,” David said, “crazy what some people can
think up when they’re trying to get a fix.”
Harlo slapped the table with one of his taloned palms, “Boy you
ain’t kidding.” He leaned in over the table, “knew this one guy, he told me
this when we were locked up together, he stole cars and would take them to his
buddy who ran a used car lot to offload ‘em. One time, he’s too strung out to
get the slim jim in right on any car he comes across, so he goes out to his
momma’s house in the middle of the night, uses his spare key, and just drives off
with it.”
“So, few days go by, his mom doesn’t want to file a police report
‘cause the cops will know straight off it was him, but he feels a little bad
about what he’s done, so he tells her about this dealership his buddy owns and
where she can get a good deal.”
“He doesn’t take her to it, does he?”
“Oh, he certainly does. He figures it’s been long enough; his mom
drove some early 2000’s Mercedes or something. Nothing too flashy, but still,
good enough to get off that lot quick as he brought it. Anyway, they get there,
she pays the taxi, this guy’s buddy walks up, they start getting the score
straight, and his momma, whew, his momma turns around, takes a look at this lot
and thinks she’s going to need a tetanus shot so close to all those rust
buckets.”
“Then what happened?” David asked, distracted from the now cold
drink his hand was wrapped around.
“Well,” Harlo started, before draining his caramel colored coffee,
“with all those junkers around, it made it pretty easy to spot her own car, so
she makes a beeline for it. Her son starts freaking out and his buddy starts
putting pieces together and is right behind him, freak out wise. So they
get to the car and his momma starts talking about how her car went missing a
few days ago and that she never called the police because she was sure that
since she had lent it to a friend there had been some obvious misunderstanding
or accident and it would naturally work itself out.”
“Now, the buddy ain’t no fool, he jumps right in saying yes, of
course, how funny the world works out in such serendipitous ways, why, he’ll
rush right along now and get her the keys and she can be right on her way.
So he goes, comes back, and brings some paperwork-”
“The hell was he going to have her sign?”
“Who knows?” Harlo resituated himself, elbows on the table. “So he
comes out with this paper, right? The lady says ‘My son can sign for me’ takes
the keys, starts the car up, then slams that thing into reverse and backs
straight into her son.”
“Oh my God.”
“And then- see, this is where it gets good- she lets him crawl out
the way, right? Then, then,” Harlo broke off to choke back his laughter, “she
backs up right, and starts to drive off. So her son starts hobbling along after
her, trying to get the back door open. Thing is, she’s locked the doors, so
he’s just tugging on the handle, hobbling along all off balance, banging on the
window saying ‘Momma, momma!’ Eventually she does this little swerve maneuver
which sends him stumbling off until he splats himself over the grill of some
1960 Chevy pickup.”
A weak silence settled between the two men. It didn’t last long,
as it was immediately broken by the surreptitious laughter of those making a
final vain attempt to impose good taste on their sense of humor.
“Children,” Harlo said when he recovered his breath, “will always
be the greatest blessing a person can have. But there are always those times,
aren’t there?”
The waitress came and topped off their cups, Harlo smiled and
nodded as she walked away, David bore holes into the cheap reflective silver.
Harlo applied his sugar and creamer combo to make the drink
palatable- seven and five, respectively, - waiting for David to speak. When he
remained silent, Harlo moved to a different tact.
“I have to say,” he started, “those things you brought in where
the cleanest baby clothes I think I’ve seen my whole life entire.” David still
said nothing. He gave no sign of anger, of grief, as if all Harlo said was
passing around him into the ether.
“Mary may have had the Immaculate Conception,” Harlo continued, “but
I swear on the Bible if given the choice, she would’ve chosen to have a child
as clean as yours was and not bear unto us our Lord and Savior. Good
thing the Good Lord didn’t let her pick, eh?”
“Enough.”
Harlo cupped his hands together and laid them six inches
away from David’s balled up fists.
“I don’t say that to make light of it,” Harlo said. “I
went through the same thing as you. How far along was your wife, when she
lost the baby?”
“Six months,” David looked back to Harlo. “Yours?”
“Four. What caused it?”
“She slept on the wrong side. Or maybe she put more
stress on herself then she realized at work. Hell, maybe the kid was psychic
and saw the world outside and decided to check out before he even got started.”
He took a sip of his coffee and slammed it back on the table. “It’s just a
thing that happens, is what doctors told us. ‘Much more common than people
realize’ as if that’s a comfort.”
“I remember that feeling, that anger. That despair, that
overwhelming desire to make it someone’s fault and make them suffer for it.”
“Yeah, you seemed real broken up about it.”
Harlo chuckled under his breath, “I’ve had a long time to carry
it, and set that burden down.” He paused, catching sight of the man he was set
to have lunch with come in and take a seat at one of the booths lined up on the
windows. The man made a motion towards Harlo to take his time and pulled a
laptop out from his satchel and began typing.
“You can never tell what you think just by looking at a man,” he
continued, “you couldn’t tell that I lost a child, or that I lost my wife soon
after.”
“Your advice to me is don’t judge a book by its cover? Really?”
“No,” Harlo said. “My point is that, horrible as this time is, it
will pass, and a new time will take its place. The most important thing for
you, David, is to not lose yourself in that swamp of anger like I did so that
when your life moves on to something new, you aren’t left drowning in the muck
behind it.”
***
He dreamed of a
daughter. Brown-haired, leaf green eyes, he saw her through visitors’ glass
first young, confused but amiable, then older, resigned, resentful and
fatigued. He prayed to see her free, free of his confinement, free of him,
even, if it meant he could see her just once in the sun. They never came.
***
After David left, Harlo
put $10 on their table and moved to Samuel’s booth. It had taken three years
for Harlo to work up the courage, but he had finally tracked down an email
address for Samuel and asked him if he could spare some time for lunch. Harlo
hadn’t expected the reply to come so promptly but was pleased that it did with
Samuel’s acceptance. The years had been kinder to him than Harlo expected, men
with a grudge do not usually age well. It sparked Harlo’s hope that they could
put the past behind them.
“Harlo, wow,” Samuel said, folding up and packing away his laptop,
“It’s still a bit odd for me, seeing you again.”
“I hope it’s not an unpleasant experience.”
“Not so far, no.”
They settled in, Harlo getting another coffee and Samuel ordering
iced tea.
“Who was that kid you were talking to?”
“A young man who brought in a donation at the shelter I work at.
He looked worse off than our usual donors and felt called to sit him down, say
what I could to him.”
“And what had him looking so worse for wear?”
“His wife had a miscarriage. It was their first child.”
“And you gave him advice?” incredulity slipping into Samuel’s
voice.
“It’s what we’re called to do, aren’t we?”
“Well,” Samuel said, “I hope you gave him better idea of how to
handle his wife in the aftermath than you did.”
Harlo winced at the comment.
“I’m sorry,” Samuel said, “I didn’t come here just to snipe at
you.”
“I think I deserved that,” Harlo answered.
“So you’re a priest these days?” Samuel asked, trying to get back
on track.
“Um-hmm,” Harlo murmured through his glass, “For about eight years
now.”
“Gotta say Harlo, if I could picture you in the cloth, I always
figured you’d go with the Catholics. All that severity and judgement, you’d
probably be the most intimidating priest ever ordained.”
Harlo smiled at the comment. “You wouldn’t be wrong in that. I
actually was looking to go with them- they just have more style, more tradition
backing them up, you know- but right around the time I was looking to become
one of them the whole child-diddling story broke out, and you know, in prison
you can’t be associated with that.”
“How’d that feel, being too good for something?”
“It was unusual. I suddenly realized how all those mothers had
been right about me and their daughters all along.”
Samuel went from smiling into his cup to choking on his drink and
dribbling it some it down his shirt. Harlo grabbed a few napkins from their
holder and held them out for Samuel who unwrapped his utensils and used that
one instead. Harlo dabbed out what little of the drink had made its way to his
side of the table, then crumpled up the napkins and set them off to the side.
He felt the moment lost, but not knowing how to rebuild to it,
Harlo asked on the question he had been holding for nearly two-decades.
“Why did you stop writing to me?”
Samuel composed himself, coughing out the final remnants of his
wayward tea, “Didn’t think you’d miss those.”
“Eventually I did. Even though you were trying to hurt me with all
that I was missing, it was nice to know someone was going out of their way to
keep me involved in the world.”
“Any particular favorites from those letters?”
“The twelve pages of nothing but ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ lyrics was
especially endearing, especially the individual letters of ‘Fuck-You-Harlo’ in
the bottom corner of each page.”
“I admit,” Samuel beamed to himself, “that was particularly
inspired.”
“Is that why you stopped,” Harlo pushed, “you reached your peak
and wanted to go out on a high note?”
“Well,” he started, “after Adelaide died, my mother, she just
seemed to stop. Wouldn’t bathe, wouldn’t change her clothes, wouldn’t do
nothing but sit surrounded by her own garbage.”
“One day, I’m cleaning out her place before I mail off my hate
letter to you and I find myself looking at this rotten orange. I’m telling you
this thing was fuzzy enough that if it started purring I’d think my mother
stole a cat off the streets. Anyway, I got to thinking that we don’t ever
expect fruit to come back from being rotten, we don’t look for the reasons why
it happened, we just see that it did and throw it away never to think about it
again.”
Harlo looked down at the ring at the bottom of the porcelain cup,
then started to speak.
“I was hoping that you could see a day when you might forgive me,”
he said.
“No, Harlo,” Samuel answered, “and that isn’t something you get to
be indignant about.”
Harlo leaned back against the booth and said, “but I’m not that
man anymore. God found me, changed me, made me into a man who would seek
repentance for what he had done-”
“That’s all well and good for you, Harlo,” Samuel interrupted,
“finding something willing to take that burden off of you, make you feel clean?
I’d need that too, if I were you.”
“But that comfort you’re looking for? You’ll never, ever,
find it with me.”
***
He knew she was lying. She hadn’t “lost” anything, she had fucking
killed it. He knew she hadn’t gone to any clinic, he’d sat out there for a week
and didn’t see her scurry inside like the rest of them. She must have taken it
out some other way, binging, throwing herself down the stairs, getting those
rugby dyke friends of hers to punch her until the job was finished. If he had
to bet, he’d pick that last one as the way she did it, a few taps from those
bulls would’ve turned the kid to mulch. She killed it, though, sure as
the day is long she fucking killed it. He knew she did it as a way to kill him,
or at least a part of him, she was too chickenshit to go for him directly, so
she had to settle for the only part of him that couldn’t fight back.
He wouldn’t be such a coward.
He had circled the block a few times already, checking
for cars that didn’t belong. Just hers in the driveway, so he went out a few
blocks in either direction, just in case someone had the bright idea to hide
their car if he came looking for them. He knew for damn sure she wasn’t smart
enough to tell anybody to do so or that any of her friends would figure that
out for themselves. But still, a man shouldn’t get cocky and let himself get in
the way of his righteous purpose. Once he confirmed the all clear, he parked
his truck and made his way to the door.
The house was dark, and he walked up to the door in
silence. For once he was happy that their cheapskate landlord hadn’t bothered
to make it out of anything more than plywood when he kicked it to splinters.
She was lying under a blanket on the couch, the haze of the TV the only light
in the room. He could make out the white of her eyes as they widened at the
sight of him, and she scrambled to get over the back of the couch as fast as
her body could move. She flopped onto the floor behind her and tried to get to
the back door, but he was already tackling her, pinning her back down.
His first punch had blood coming out of her mouth, the
second connected with her skull and broke his hand. Howling, he stood up and
started kicking her in the ribs and chest. She cried and moaned with every hit,
he could feel her ribs breaking underneath the soles of his boots. When he
stopped to catch his breath, a low, pitiful wail started to come out of her.
She tried to curl up, to block him out of sight with her arms, but she
couldn’t, her shattered ribs stabbed her sides and she uncurled again, a
drowned baying all she could manage. There was nothing else in the world but
that sound, nothing but her face pressed into the floor sticky from blood,
tears, and snot. To make it all go away, he stomped her face in until he
slipped on the wet remains.
The police would find him there, unconscious in the dark,
the body of his sin growing cold, the blood of his remission seeping into the
linoleum.
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