Without Air
Page 2
***
I sat in tortuous thought, my feet grounded to the moist grass. I sat beneath a wide tent structure facing the black coffin where within my father’s body ossified. The rain muffled the discourse of the funeral proceedings. The fold out, frangible chair could hardly hold my heavy burdens I carried that afternoon. I refused to let moisture penetrate my eyes; I grew angry at the burial rituals and the counterfeit people that surrounded me. I came to the conclusion, as I looked beyond the rinsed opaque coffin, that my father’s body was nothing but an empty capsule that was once filled with a spirit of determination and honor. Fifty six years he lived upon the earth, fifty six years for what? What did he accomplish? What was the purpose of his life, or any other for that matter? Theology is hardly my forte but I cannot adjourn a purpose of this forsaken earth. My father’s honor accounts for nothing now.
After the burial an older gentleman approached me. Desire for social interaction was obsolete, at least for a while. At first, his approach was not welcoming at the least. I did not recognize this man, my curiosity had dimmed and carried no weight of satisfying. I was sure he would stammer into endless reiteration of his deep condolences; I found this was not the case.
“Yer father was a great man.”
“You knew my father?” I replied quickly.
“Anthony William Dunbar, aye a great man indeed”
I realized that the old man wore a similar Irish flat top and bill hat that my father would often wear whenever he would scamper off to the pub.
“How did you know him?” I stopped in my tracks, gesturing demand, irritated that he did not answer my question.
His head lowered and eyes dropped slowly. “I owe a debt to your father”
“Debt? What kind of debt?”
“Some time ago, back in Scotland, me wife fell ill. She’d been for quite a while. I was oot choppin’ wood, using whit wee energy I’d left from workin’ in my fields and worryin' or my crops yon were strugglin’ to survive that year. Hunched or the wood, puggled, I swung the ax as usual, but forgot to spread me legs. The blooming ax slide through the wood and into my shin. I landed on me bahookie and laid bleeding. Naw mair than a few minutes past when I saw a man throo’ the trees walkin’ aff the ben. I let oot a yelp and he quickly ran to me side. He carried me inside and patched me wound. He stopped by the hoose everyday for weeks tae help with me chores and things that I was not capable of doin’. Bletherin’ with one anotha’, I mentioned that we were in jeopardy of loosin’ our hame tae the bank. A week after I was completely heal’d we received an anonymous letter. Inside the letter was enough money tae help us throo’ our trying times. I knew it was yer father. I knew it was. God sent he was.”
After hearing the old man speak I yearned for my father once again as I glanced back at the casket that disappeared into the earth.
“Why are you here?”
“A few years ago me wife passed and I had tae leave me hame, for sake of sanity, I came tae America. As of late, I read the obituaries in the Boston Herald and I saw the name 'Anthony William Dunbar'”
He continued, “Someday I will find a way to repay me debt. His honor will live on forever.”
“You are wrong. My father is dead and his honor died when he did.” I tried to withhold my frustration and not reflect my suffering.
The old man's demeanor changed, looked me sqaure in the eye, and recited a short poem by Emily Dickinson that I would later write my college thesis about.
“All men for Honor hardest work
But are not known to earn –
Paid after they have ceased to work
In Infamy or Urn --”
Rain continued to fall that day and into the night.