VERFYLSCHTE! VERFYLSCHTE! BY
JAMES EMERSON
A middle-aged man relaxed at his kitchen table on an early Saturday morning preparing to read the Mobile Statesman’s front page. He was sipping black coffee and chewing homemade butter tarts his wife prepared the previous night. She was sleeping warm under the covers of their king size mattress dreaming of her stepson, Frank Mitchem. She hadn’t seen him for three days and he called her when he’d leave for a midweek getaway with Quincy, his childhood friend. He hadn’t called! She and her husband expected the worst praying for the best.
The sun hadn’t risen and geese on their family property were still floating on a small man-made pond with their heads tucked into their feathers not bothered by the multitude of water bugs sprinting back and forth in front of their breasts. Edward Mitchem filled his second mug of coffee and added sugar while yawning. He hadn’t wiped the sleep from the corners of his eyes and could feel green sand paper run-off scratching his eyelids. Edward set his cup on the newspaper and cleared his eyes. Now, he felt awake and decided to play a record. Thumbing through his sizeable vinyl collection from Classical to Opera to Blues and Smooth Jazz, Edward picked a soothing piece from Puccini. His favorite opera, La fanciulla del West, he relaxed in its soothing intensity.
It was time to open the paper. He looked at the headline, “Alabama continues to allow drilling in the Gulf”. He clapped his hands. The day wouldn’t be so bad. He continued to the next story, “August, Alabama…” the rest of the headline was smudged by a small coffee stain. It didn’t catch his interest. He tossed the front page and grabbed the sports section. Nothing worthwhile either, Edward was from Georgia and hated the University of Alabama. It was the only sports topic his newspaper covered. Besides, he was getting too old for the newspaper. Edward hadn’t a reason to keep with current affairs. He had money and a comfortable retirement and a loving wife. It was enough to keep Edward busy through the rest of his life. He was fine with seclusion. A solitary life in the southern Alabaman country with Aphelia was all Edward wanted in the first place. Still, he worried about Frank. It was time for their annual Mobile weekend vacation.
It wasn’t too big of a deal. Still, it wasn’t like Frank to abandon him. The boy knew the day, the time of year. It was annual. Drive to the coast, eat a bucket of raw oysters and hit up a strip bar. They were adults and neither ever mentioned it to the woman of the household. It was a once a year type of thing where they’d sit in the back and glory behind concealing darkness. Edward and Frank refrained from catching each other’s eye while buying a dance. This wasn’t out of embarrassment. They enjoyed being men and exhibiting their freedom once a year to be men. Edward was getting old. He was pushing sixty. The excitement a mid-twenties naked female brought him would soon abandon his loins. Soon, his heart couldn’t take the pleasure Dammit, he wanted to spend the day with Frank, the stupid bastard. He was a thankless orphan.
Years before, Frank’s mom ran off leaving him at a fire station. Edward imagined the moment it happened. Frank’s toothless mouth sucking on his mother’s nipple, drying the well the best he could. All the sudden, he starts getting pulled and jerked. Frank has to let go. He’s crying while his teenage bitch mother struggles to button her top. She sets him on the steps without thought or regretful notion. She wanted to get high and whore herself on the streets for some pimp. Babies are regrettable mistakes to girls who refuse to change their lives. However, Edward believed abortion was murder. He had no problem with it. The less Alabaman unwanted children there were, then the less there were in foster homes.
Edward didn’t have children of his own. His wife, Aphelia, was barren. They went to the adoption agency and saw Frank staring at them from a wooden cradle. He was the only infant not crying or drooling. It caught their eyes. He was proud. Edward and Aphelia wanted Frank to remain proud the rest of his life. He wasn’t going to know the horrors of a pedophile foster home parent or the trifles of an abusive state ward. Frank was theirs.
During Frank’s childhood, Edward worked him hard on the property and crafted him to the best of his ability in the image of a good southern boy. Frank was better looking and taller and stronger than Edward. He chuckled and thought it better for society he wasn’t able to spread his seed like a mule into every nook and cranny he caved. It was fate the one crevasse he filled throughout his adulthood couldn’t sprout forth his seedlings. He watered and fertilized his lawn three or four times a week for ten years before he sent Aphelia to get her area examined.
The best way Edward could explain it to his curious now passed mother was as he so sweetly said to her, “Pulverized from birth, mother.”
After so many years of sadness, Aphelia and Edward were over it. Old age smoothed out their bitterness and frustration. Edward never held it against Aphelia. They found a blessing in the form of an abandoned, athletic bastard.
He had to come home! Frank was going to come home. He was twenty-two and strong and intelligent, smarter than the average adoptee. He wasn’t in trouble. They raised the boy right, but he was nowhere in sight. He always called. Three days gone is too long. “Damn him, the thoughtless prick,” said Edward.
He threw a stone at an unwary goose in the pond. The half-pound rock pounded into the bird’s chest and Edward delighted in the small explosion of feathers. The goose struggled to stay above the water disturbing the dawn’s serenity as a dozen other geese jettisoned into the air flying in their v-shape formation to the north where some peace resided. Edward looked at them coast off and saw the light from his back door. He turned and was surprised to see Aphelia. She bore the weight of a nightmarish sleep. He noticed deep stress in the fluffy bags under her eyes. They were dark and moist with tears as she walked to Edward in her nightgown and slippers. In a moment of mutual trepidation at the reality they were facing, Edward put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Looking toward the stretching shadows, they enjoyed the sun rising above the treetops of their Alabaman landscape hoping to melt in its serene divinity.
THE END
