Authors: Edmond Manning
Boy, that was some kick-ass screeching out of the parking lot. I’ll have to compliment him on that tomorrow afternoon. I thought Perry’s eyes would explode.
Perry’s mouth hangs open, his eyes stunned wide. He’s been here before. Leave it to a nine-year-old’s broken heart to crawl into the cupboard under the kitchen sink to meet his gloom. Perry’s heart forgot to come out and play a different game. I happen to enjoy hide and seek, especially helping the other kid get found.
And I can’t believe how much expression I can see in his face.
These night vision goggles are much better than my ones at home. I thought I knew about all the latest models, but these are fantastic. I have to make a note to research new surveillance equipment. I need some little handheld computer, an electronic gadget I can use to write notes to myself, book titles, and things like “out of eggs.” I need to invent that. With a tiny little mouse attached so you could navigate right in your palm. Wouldn’t that be adorable?
Focus up, moron.
Perry might be tempted to race down the mountain chasing our van, pointless and death-invoking as that may be, except for the duck. He can’t drag that cage over mountain boulders with no flashlight. I have gambled that he unconsciously prides himself on being the exact opposite of his father in this regard; he would never desert a helpless young life to the mercies of our uncaring world. Perry is
nothing
like a man who would do that. And if he is tempted, Perry will experience the grief of his father. Because the
Siren Song
imagery explodes in celebration, Perry may not recognize his father’s deep mourning painted into every stroke. He may not have realized the agony his father felt knowing he would not see his son become a man. But Perry will taste that grief tonight, whether he opts to flee or decides to stay. I understand Lost Kings.
Perry leans against our boulder, completely still. He turns his head sharply a few times because he can’t actually believe that this has happened.
“
Shit.
”
It almost doesn’t matter if he figures out this latest trick; it may not matter one bit. I have wagered everything that the sheer gut punch reaction, this latest abuse during a weekend of exhausting emotions, must now rip through Perry in such a visceral way—the agony so core to his identity—that if his screaming brain logic argues this as another of my deceptions, it probably changes nothing in his heart: Perry trusted love and then got ditched.
Again.
He sits for a while, in his giant kitchen cupboard atop Mount Tam. But watching his legs twitch, unable to keep still, I can guess that pent-up feelings grow inside him. Soon he returns Mr. Quackers to his cage. I catch a few angry quacks from where I’m hiding.
Perry paces. He looks toward the darkness, hoping to see headlights returning. But he will see none.
“
No,
” he yells at one point, loud enough for me to hear.
To the rock I’m hiding behind, I whisper, “Yes.”
Help us, kings. Go to Perry now that he has been once again deserted by love. Please come, King Aabee, and bring an old friend.
“You will come back,” he says again, louder, perhaps realizing there’s no need for him to be quiet.
He waits.
Nothing.
His investment banker brain must gloat right now. All sorts of miserable messages broadcast, all under the similar theme: too bad you didn’t listen to me, your brain, because I calculated that something horrible like this would happen. Not this awful, of course. I told you not to believe the invitation from the art gallery stranger. You were an idiot to trust—
He yells, “
No.
”
He throws the heavy black cover on the duck cage haphazardly, as if he blames this tiny creature.
Mr. Quackers protests, an irritated little “
Hey.
”
Perry stops and looks at the black box. He opens the cage door again and calls the little creature into his hands, perhaps to apologize for creating instant darkness. Perhaps he needs to hold something soft for comfort. It’s hard to read his shadowed face.
Something happens: his shoulders hunch over, jerking a few times. Instead of comforting Perry, I think this squirming creature provoked the opposite, perhaps unlocking something forgotten, grief and rage for the soft and vulnerable creatures in this world, discarded by people they love. Maybe Perry, for the first time, wonders about the duck’s parents.
The sound starts as a groan. The groan becomes a sharp intake of breath, and Perry stumbles back to our boulder, leans back, inching downward, each half-inch descent accompanied by a bigger sob. By the time he squats on the earth, his mouth stretches wide open. Mr. Quackers wriggles hard, but in silence.
The low moan which emerges next is a death moan, a surrender to that which cannot be denied. I would pay money to never hear that sound again, the starter pistol to despair.
Perry really did love me, and I really did leave him.
Nobody told Perry that he would never quite trust men because buried deep lay a secret fear that they were somehow in collusion with his absent father, and wouldn’t everyone laugh heartily when Perry fell for it again. He doesn’t know this ache binds all boys who have lost fathers, gay and straight. Girls too, of course. We all want our dads to come back. Even those kids who lived through shitty fathers long for the good versions of those men, the ones who will love us and show us the way.
Help me, Dad. This life is harder than I thought it would be.
Perry weeps.
Seeing his despair ignites it in me. I cry for Perry and his lost father, I cry for my own lack of parents. I cry for all of us who thought adults could be trusted, only to experience disappointment again and again. I cry because those who had good fathers do not understand the void for those of us who did not.
I have no doubt that I remain unheard; I have mastered the art of crying without sound.
I will never feel exactly what Perry feels. I can never fully know him in that way. Hell, I never even met my father, I don’t think. But to make it safe for him to touch this aching part of his life, this bleeding wound that defined his entire existence, someone must say, “I will go. Send me!” Sometimes you have to work the sewers.
To grieve alone is hard. To grieve with someone who meets you under that green-thistled tree is shared grief, a different hard. The deepest compassion I know is the most gnarled tree in the desert. It is also the only one with shade.
Perry cries, and somehow during this time, he manages to get the duck back in the cage. He covers it lovingly this time, still crying, and then carefully stands. He wipes his face on his arms.
“I’m not going to freak out,” he announces to no one. “I don’t care, you son of a bitch.”
King Perry awakens.
“You
fucking
asshole,” Perry says louder, his voice still unsteady and raw. “I’m not leaving.”
Perry chokes out a sob and cries again for a while. He sits, he stands. He walks. Pacing angrily does not seem to stop the flow of his tears.
“I have faith in Bolinas, you
dick
.”
Saying this aloud makes Perry crumple to his knees, because when you stand up to a bully, even if you lose, a tiny piece of your own untouched power sparks alive. For reasons I have never understood, believing in yourself sometimes hurts as much as being abandoned.
I wipe my eyes and scold myself to come back, be present. I’m not here to break down; I’m here to protect the one true king. If he trips or if he attempts to prepare Mr. Quackers for travel, I fall back on Plan B: flute music. Plan C is to appear. But Plan A seems to be working, so I remain invisible. I urge myself to remember the ugly names, the ones they used to call me. It works; my heart grows harder, hard enough to let go, let him carry tonight’s grief alone.
“Fuck you, Vin. I believed in your stupid kings and your—”
He cries again and covers his face. Maybe he remembered that King Aabee died suddenly and unjustly, away from his wife and sons. Maybe it’s something else. Who knows? It’s agony to have no idea exactly what he feels, but if I stood at his side and asked him to explain everything happening, would he? Could he? Can anyone articulate the language of the heart?
He stops soon enough, sputters down and stares all around him, the rocks, the sky, the navy cotton ocean all rumpled in the corner.
Perry stares at the night, and Li’l Shirley winks his way. She’s in on the joke. The stars snap their fingers as they did last night when we raced around Alcatraz, while we made love. Hear it, Perry. Hear the song of the Strange Musician. A thousand muffled stars chittering and snapping, the echo of crunching ocean, the wind’s “eeeeees” stinging your ears, the thick trees below, wrestling their own breezes. The sky, the earth, and the ocean live in sound; everything sings.
King Aabee has come at last.
When he speaks again, I cannot hear the words. He talks to his stone, like I talked to mine. Maybe we can use them as communication devices. I’m tempted to speak into my rock, “Can you hear me, Perry?” A moment later he turns in my direction, and I hear his subdued ranting once again.
“… much.
Please
, like I couldn’t figure
that
out. The stupid blue castle, the hillsides of blue flames, constant references to forgiveness. Well, fuck that. As if saying ‘I forgive you’ makes me
—
”
He cries again, another heart-wrenching series of staccato sounds. He wipes his face and peers into the duck cage to make sure Mr. Quackers listens from his darkened room.
He puts his hands on his hips.
“I forgive you, Vin,” he says, trying to sound sarcastic, but like earlier today, the words come out all wrong: half-sincere, half-surprised.
He stops and wipes his eyes. He cries for a moment. A smaller huff comes out of his chest, another letting go. He says, “I forgive you.”
I think the words startle him. Maybe not the words, but the tone. He has a look about him, unguarded and open, but also devastated. Something is wrong, or something is right, an unbalanced expression that makes my heart beat faster.
“I forgive you,” Perry says, in an empty voice. “Even though you abandoned me.”
His head snaps up; arms zing out straight, like in the alley when the birthday cake smashed against the pavement. He staggers and drops to his hands and knees, falls hard, coughing, gasping for air, and making cawing sounds into the dirt. It’s terrifying to convulse that way, the hard juncture of puking, hiccupping, and crying, the body unsure how to process an overwhelming emotion, so it tries everything at once.
He cough-barfs this way for what seems like five minutes, though it must certainly be less time than that, and I watch with great attention, legs coiled for action until everything stops. Still on his knees and his upper body pressed low to the ground, I witness his shoulders heave, decreasing convulsions. The words are wet and soft at first, a gentle repetition of a phrase repeated louder as a groan until finally I understand his repeated mantra: “Oh Dad, Oh Dad, Oh Dad, Oh Dad….”
We all telegraph the message to somebody:
Don’t leave me
.
I would be lost without you, searching for love but finding only fog. Please don’t go.
Then, that person leaves. Death, the end of a relationship, or just unreturned phone calls, leaving is leaving.
Perry cries harder, the deeper well opened at last. While I am sure he cried plenty for his father prior to this night, I wonder if those tears came from the place where he now finds himself, moans of an ancient oak door, slowly creaking open.
King Perry crawls out from under the sink cabinet.
I watch him with longing, having learned long ago that my instinct to go comfort him in this moment will not serve. These tears need to be shed, wept into the earth where there is no hope of consolation. Sometimes a man has to cry alone.
I have no idea how long we stay this way; checking my pocket watch would be blasphemous, as if something like this could be, should be, timed. Who cares? We’ve got a few more hours before the sky shifts toward light. But after another long period, Perry gets to his feet, and I feel my own heart swell in wild anticipation, because the way that Perry stands, it’s different.
He surveys his world.
Am I crazy to think he stands differently? Maybe. But I don’t think so. He’s not a victim anymore: that part of life is over. He is no longer a prisoner of a mountaintop; no, he is a man
standing
on a mountaintop. It’s a very different experience.
He looks like hell, his face raw, staggering to each direction in turn, peering into the night. While pointing north, the words are muffled, but I hear him say, “I forgive you both, you bastards.”
When he turns back my way, I see fresh tears streaming downward.
This triumphant moment probably does not feel all that triumphant to him, but instead a new submission, recognition that sometimes your heart just gets broken. That’s just how it goes.
Something makes him cry again, hard for a moment, and then he stops. He puts a hand against the stone and stares at the ocean for a while, the watery castle painted a sparkling, glittering black except where Li’l Shirley gives a kiss, and only there, a transcendent blue. He opens a water bottle and drinks half of it at once, learning against the rock and taking more swigs every few minutes.
Perry gathers our Mexican throw blanket around his shoulders and torso, climbs a nearby boulder, and settles in. He’s not facing me, so I only see the side of his head as he stares into the ocean and sky.
L
ESS
than a half hour passes before his body jerks hard, as if pelted by a small rock.
I tense up and scan the area quickly to see if he heard something I have not. I see nothing. Nothing over there. I turn a full 360 degrees, preparing myself to move quickly. Anything? Nothing over there. I’ve got an air horn at the ready that will fuck over any creature with ears. I grip my bowie knife tighter, unsheathed and ready for action, though I hope I do not have to use it. I hate violence.
“No,” he says, and he wipes his face again. “No, no, no.”