Warrior

1

It's a chilly night in late autumn, Pittsburg, the snow's pungent but invisible and by first glance, it's a regular evening for retiree Paddy Conlon.

Paddy has been on an AA meeting and is listening to the audio book of Moby Dick while he was driving home in the dark. His face and physique is not in grave decay, as one would assume. Yes, his cheeks are raked with deep lines of immortalized sorrow and hard liquor, but his self-deception is a lullaby.

The catalyst, as it wobbles up and triggers the chain of actions and reactions, is the fact that by the end of the drive he finds his youngest son on the steps to his front door.

We understand that Paddy really needs the soothing, rhythmic audio book in the ears, that, fragile as it is, this his way of keeping himself between the high and low, to preserve the absolute focus, mind set, as he must, must have, in order to to continue collecting days of sobriety. He seems somehow to have made peace with life. He accepts it as it is now, for better or worse.

It could have continued so for all eternity. Floating between sleep and wakefulness, oscillating between rational calculations and ignorance.

When he finds the catalyst himself this evening sitting on the top of the stairs, he is suddenly accountable, nose to nose, for virtually a lifetime of dodgy behavior, for being an asshole, to be constantly drunk, for beating up his wife, and for making the car a higher priority than his two sons well-being.

This is implied in his son's sarcasm, in the built-up hatred oozing out of contempt, in the side comments, he can not swallow.

We'll see Tommy's silhouette first. And a hand that sloppily raises the vodka bottle to wet lips.
Paddy hesitates with his fingers on the key. The silhouette of his boy is not a ghost: it's a grown man in a black hoodie, two knees pointing in opposite direction as he sits with thighs spread, a slack jaw the only visible feature protruding under the heavy hood; no, there's eyes. Tired eyes sitting and waiting, very wounded eyes, restrained tears. The open wounds of having been abandoned long ago.

Tommy carries with him a continual sorrow in his heart, of having been abandoned (by his father), and in a way, abandoned by everyone he loved: his father, the older brother, then his mother, who died of leukemia, and then the most disabling loss of them all, his best friend in the Marines.

It is a pain and grief that no man is able to carry, without breaking inside. Tommy has amassed pills and an alcohol problem in a desperate attempt to hold it together, to save himself from total destruction. The pills, alcohol, black coffee, errors of judgment, the carelessness, it's just substitutes for human ties. But that we do not understand right now, any of us.

Tommy has a single thing that prevents him from killing himself: Best friend's wife Pilar and their two small children, and they need help financially. He promised Pilar, to help them, not to abandon them. If there is only one thing in life that is good, if only he has a good thing left in his life which stands for honor and morality, it is this promise, and that he intends to keep. He will not abandon them. He will protect them from the pain he experienced time and time again in his own life. This and only this drives him to move forward.

He can not be bothered with all the little everyday choices, all those areas of life that seem so important to us. No, he just needs one goal to get out of bed in the morning. It is to find an opportunity to earn money that he can give to Pilar.

So Tommy is like missile, programmed to find water in a desert. Everything else, all feelings, all reactions, all he would say and do when he meets his dad, is set on stand by mode. Everything is toned down, blackened, except the reeking, explosive anger that he feels towards his father who started the whole thing. Who got the ball rolling to destruction, and which now has the nerve to be satisfied with his life. Dad had his own ball to stop rolling.

Tommy rolls steadily downhill Pittsburgh's hills down to hell, the six feet under the ground.
As drawn by the magnetism, he can not put words to it, do not justify it with logic, or with heart and soul, he returns home, where it all began. He seeks out the crime scene.
Why home, why not look for a job elsewhere with better chances, in a city that is not so condemned and dormant as the former industrial city of Pittsburgh?

He explains it to himself, that he can not afford to stay in a hotel or rent a place to stay, and need to use a different name. In Pittsburgh, he may become invisible, he knows the streets inside and out, he can move there in the outsourced maze effortless, and nowhere are there obstacles that disturb his focus on the goal.

A man on autopilot can withstand the harshest environments anytime.

Yes, he has also an abundance of anger and hatred that wants out, you guess. A deep desire of revenge, showing off his miserable fate for dad, make him feel guilty.

Tommy and Paddy goes into the house. Tommy gets stuck immediately on all photographs and tries to persuade Paddy to drink with him, so it becomes clear that Tommy is wide open to the past, he is being pulled down there instantly, because he's stuck there, like a nightmare that repeats itself time time, night after night, and in the end every time he closes his eyes, every time he blinks in broad daylight.

He must, he must be there, but it hurts so much, and talk about it, get it clear, open wound again, and it does not take a long conversation until he has found their way into the most painful memory of them all, that breathtakes his father: How Tommy's mother was coughing up blood and prayed to god on her knees, while Tommy "bathed her with holy water, because she had no health insurance."

But God was somewhere else, God did not answer. Yes, ultimately, Tommy was betrayed not only by all the people he had ever depended upon, but also by God.
Higher powers murdered his mother, left her injured and let her die. Helplessness and powerlessness are moored inside Tommy ever since, and no matter how loud he yells, how exhausted he makes himself become, how high on drugs, he is too weak to pry up the grille that keeps helplessness and powerlessness trapped inside him.

You can not get away from it, it does not go, and it keeps on pushing him beyond all reason.

"I'm sorry."

Tommy shakes his head dismissively as if Paddy words barely been worthy to perceive by hearing, as if all the "sorry" rings false.

For the first time in fourteen years Paddy experiences a nerve wracking pain deep in his chest, a monster tearing and clawing, a monster that confirms to him that he is guilty. He has committed the ultimate betrayal as a parent.

He has not protected Tommy from the extreme pain - losing a parent. He has in fact been God's accomplice to the murder. What is gripping Paddy is not his wife's death, but the sight of his little boy's pale, sweaty face and wandering glance around the living room, and the reflection of his facial features reveal that he is reliving the same feelings as he did in that moment, when his mother died.

A flashback, as if it happen again, in this room.
Tommy falls asleep quietly while still in the state of that little boy, in the armchair, and Paddy cries.
He feels sorry for his boy, but at the same time he is filled with love and hope, for he is convinced that his son has come home.

If Tommy had been awake, he would've laughed.