My Father's Ring

Chapter Two
In the morning I am awakened by the attending nurse bright and early at 6 a.m. the only thing missing was a crowing rooster. I had just verily cracked open my eyes and could see my mother fast asleep in a straight back chair. I wondered and wondered how I ever got to this point in my life? One day I was enjoying a life full of wonder and amazement and the next day everything seems to stop on a dime.

It all started back in 1956 which was the year that both of my parents had started attending the University of Beaumont in the great state of Texas. My father was actually raised in a small town in Ohio where he had been working for most of his life at the very early age of nine. He was raised very traditionally when it came to discipline. His father was known as a very strict disciplinarian so it wasn't anything for him to grab a belt, a willow branch, or a piece of wood as a means of teaching him, " the facts of life." The sun had yet to make its presence known as a sound of a creaking floor seem to be a precursor to what was about to take place. It was like a daily ritual three honks from a car horn and a slamming sound of a bundle of papers hitting the front porch. The sound of a butter knife running across the radiator was the signal from his father that he had better be up and about his father's business. He jumps out of the bed and hits the stairs running before his father starts screaming. He runs straight out the front door and with both hands gripping the cords that are secured around the bundled papers he drags them through the front door, and back into the house. He looks up from a squat position and there stands his father with a knife in his trembling hand. I jump back just in the nick of time as his hand comes down and across the cords holding the papers together. The cords fly apart as I grab the first loose newspaper and twist it into a tight fit roll, followed by a rubber band to secure it. It took about ten minutes to prepare fifty papers for the morning delivery. I jump up on my bike and hit the inlaid brick road to deliver papers across town before I would head off to school for the day. I arrive at school already exhausted from the morning, so it shouldn't be a surprise that my desktop becomes a makeshift bed for which me to rest my head. The teacher would flip the back of my ear with his index finger and say, " maybe you should start going to bed a bit earlier instead of watching tv all night long." If the teacher only knew he may have been a bit more understanding. I would then arrive home and it was more of the same except now it was about 200 papers. The theory was somewhere between the morning and the evening I was to accomplish everything else that required as a child and if I didn't the willow branch would find its way to my back. In the evening after a little bit of watching tv on our old black and white set, I would fall asleep in the middle of the floor. There it was me and my father snoozing away until about two in the morning. This would probably be the closest I would ever get to him without his anger flying into a rage. I remember the worst beating I had ever received from him, even though to him he was just doing his duty as a father in the same way his father had done to him. One evening I had stayed out way too late just running around town after delivering the papers. I have my bike parked in front of the local drug store, and just as I came out unwrapping my all time favorite candy bar "a Snickers" he appears with a look of rage upon his face and smacks the candy bar out of my hand. I look up at him with knowledge of what was coming next as he smacks me across my face and begins to scream at me. " what in the hell are you doing here? You know that you're supposed to come straight home after delivering your papers. I have had enough of your shit for the last time. Now, you get your little ass home before I knock the shit out of you." The fear seemed to strike straight through my heart as the tears began to emanate from my eyes as I felt a willow branch strike me with every step I took toward the house. I wanted to run back and grab my bike along with my snickers that were probably covered with piss ants those were the small red ones, but I knew better than to do that when he was in a rage. I looked back as I ran up the street and hoping no one would steal my bicycle while I was gone. I ran up the street muttering how much I hated him and hoped that in some way he would die. It didn't seem to take any time to develop a negative attitude toward him more and more with each new beating he gave me. I ran down the street with a heart filled with the gravels of hate toward my father and once I arrived home and behind closed doors was when the beatings really started. He marched me to my room and then I was told to remove all of my clothes, which I did promptly. He then bent me over the bed and proceeded to wail on my backside like there was no tomorrow. It was at this point that it was no longer pain that I felt it was the fuel of personal anger directed in his direction. He then instructs me not to leave the room, so for the rest of the evening, I lay naked in my room thinking about how I could inflict pain on my father's life. There were good days and there we bad days the next several years, but as I grew my only focus was bringing him as much pain as he had brought me. In actuality, I was beginning to obsess about how I could hurt him or even kill him if I was given half the chance. Then just a few years before I had graduated from high school everyone's life was changed literally overnight.
I find myself laying in my room doing what my father despised most listening to some good old rock and roll music as he would yell from downstairs, " turn that long-haired shit off. " I would just lay there thinking " fuck you, asshole! " as Black Sabbath continued to play on my eight-track player. I slide open my bottom drawer and pull out a pack of smokes which were " Winstons " along with my father's Camel lighter that my mother had bought him years before for his fifth anniversary. I lay there just laughing since my old man had been looking for that lighter for about six months. I light up a smoke and enjoy the moment because I was doing everything that he despised. The day began to creep up on me like a slow burn and before I realized it I was sound asleep while my cigarette was still burning between my fingers. I turned over in my bed grabbed a hold of my pillow to snuggle and unknown to me my smoke had dropped to the floor, while I was asleep the whole time. I am awakened by the sound of breaking glass and when I opened my eyes there stood a fireman that threw me over his shoulder and carried me to safety. The lights from the firetruck seem to almost blind me as I lay there in the ambulance watching our house burn to the ground. I just then fell into unconsciousness as the ambulance rushed me to University Hospital. I still remember the day like it was yesterday and it certainly the worst day of my life, but the days to follow would alter my life in a way I could have never imagined as a young man of sixteen.
On the following day, I am awakened in the hospital by the nurse for my medication and the changing of my bandages. I could verily open my eyes but could feel the pain throughout my body. I ask in a very low voice, " are my parents ok? " she responds, the doctor will discuss that with you when he arrives later this afternoon. I'm my heart I knew that he was dead, but the thing I had wished for as an angry young man had seemed to come true. In the afternoon the doctor arrives and confirmed what I already knew in my heart they were never coming back and it was because of the actions of a young man that was full of rage.

The End of Chapter Two