Dreams of the Sleepless

Unforgiven Sins

We drove in silence. I was still trying to make sense of everything that had happened in the past few hours. Finally, I broke the quiet spell. "I noticed the photo on your desk. I didn't know that you had a daughter."

Eli gave me a sideways glance. "You never asked." He sighed. "She's grown now, married with a little girl of her own."

"Really?"

Eli nodded.

"Well, what do you know? Eli's a grandpa." The pained expression on his face told me that I'd hit a raw nerve. "Where do they live?"

"Here in Bethany Crossing." His voice was flat, not the tone of a doting grandparent.

I knew the answer to the next question before I even asked it. "How long has it been since you've seen them?"

"Seen them?" He paused. "I see them every Sunday in church. I sit on the back pew and watch them from a distance. My daughter hasn't spoken to me in years." He pursed his lips for just a moment. "I've never held my granddaughter." His voice was tired and his eyes glistened.

"Eli, the family in that photo on your desk looks happy. What happened?"

He surprised me by asking, "Joe, how do you measure success?"

"Success?" I struggled for an answer. "Money, I guess . . . or maybe power . . . and then there's fame."

"Ah," he exhaled, letting his exclamation hang in the air. "The three weird sisters."

"The what?"

He glanced from the road with a faint smile.

"The three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth."

He glanced again. I was still lost.

"In Shakespeare's play, the main character, Macbeth, meets three witches, the weird sisters, as he returns from battle. They foretell of his rise to the throne. What better success, right? But what their incantations fail to reveal are the costs of becoming king. They fail to tell him that it will cost his reputation, his peace of mind, and eventually his life."

Eli glanced at me again, "You see, Joe, money, power, and fame are the modern day weird sisters, divining success, but they obscure the dreadful price in the mist of their dark deception. I was a gullible, small town boy who listened as they hissed their gilded prophecies, never thinking that someday the bill would come due. But come due, it did. The real measure of success is the cost, the price you pay. In my case, I can measure my success in deceitful dealings, broken promises, broken hearts . . . and ultimately a shattered family."

I watched the white lines of the highway flashing by in the windshield with Eli's reflected face superimposed on the glass. He appeared to be in a trance, maybe gazing into the crystal ball as the dark shadows of what could have been danced to the chanting of the three weird sisters.

The spell was broken as he recited, more to the universe than to me, "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."

It sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. "Shakespeare?" I asked.

Eli's reflection revealed a heavy sadness. "No, a much wiser author."

We drove on in the quiet darkness, memories of unforgiven sins dancing in the looking glass of the windshield.

----- Author's Note -----

How are Eli and Joe similar?

Did Eli gravitate toward Joe because he recognized another lost soul like himself?

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