A Thousand Tomorrows

Chapter 4

Luke's sides hurt from running.

He dug his fingers into his waste and stared down at the empty street. "Dad!" The picture filled his mind again. The cab slowing down, stopping for a minute, then making a gradual left turn. "Dad, come back."

A breeze hit him in the face and he realized he was crying.

"Dad!" Luke gasped, grabbing any air he could suck in. Why did he leave? Where did he go? Dad took trips all the time, but he alway came home. Always. What had he said? He wasn't coming back; was that it? His dads words rumbled around inside him, making his chest tight, filling his heart, should and lungs with hurt. Every breath was a struggle.

His dad was gone.

He was gone and there was nothing Luke could do about it. Come back, Dad! The words stayed stuck in his throat this time, and he stared down. Stay feet. Don't move. He'll come back; he will.

Luke lifted his eyes to the place where the cab had turned. Any second, right? He'd turn around, come back home, tell them he was sorry for getting so mad, right? Luke waited and waited and waited. And then he remembered the thing his dad had said about Ben.

I can be a father to him...

Eight years was plenty old enough for Luke to understand the problem. Ben was different. He didn't look right or talk right or even walk right. He was happy and really good at loving everyone and he almost never got mad but their dad maybe didn't notice that. That's why this time having his dad leave was more serious.

Because he didn't want to be a dad to Ben.

Luke started down the street. Come back, Dad! Please turn around. He waited and watched for what almost felt like hours.

Nothing.

No movement, no sounds of car, no yellow cabs. Nothing. Just the quiet dance of twisty green leaves above him and the hot summer song of unseen crickets. Or something like crickets.

Later his mother would tell him that she cried for him, standing there all that time, waiting for his father to come back. But after a while Luke wasn't just standing there waiting, he was swept up in a feeling he'd never known of until that day.

It started in his feet, almost as it was oozing through the sidewalk. A burning that flooded his veins and pushed higher, past his knees, in his gut until it swirled his mind and filled his heart and finally his soul.

Not until it fully consumed him, not until it took up every spare bit of his young body, did he realize what had come over him, into him.

Luke knew whats hate was because of Jeffery Bloom in his second grade class. Jeffery was bigger than everyone else. Bigger and meaner. He tripped the younger kids and stole the ball from kids playing kickball, and he laughed at Luke when he got the answer in wrong in class. Luke hated Jeffery Bloom.

But what he was feeling now, this was something new so powerful it burned in his arms and legs, making him feel trapped, heavy and slow. All the other times Luke had used the words hate, he had always been wrong. Because the feeling he had now, what he felt for his father, was hatred. Hate.