The Ghost of Providence

Chapter Two

Corbyn

It was long into the day. The sun had danced its little dance with the sky already and was set to come down. It breathed its tired breaths across the land, slowly, and with weight.

Corbyn’s father looked to him between signature, solid strides. “What do you think of it?” he asked.

And Corbyn groaned at the question. “Of what?”

He’d grown weary of their jaunt to the vendor many distances ago, and it had begun to show in the way he spoke. They had come and gone to every marketplace possible on the island in search of this mysterious merchant with little to show for it. It was as if his father had no idea where exactly he was leading them to, and, by his own admission, he didn’t. Vendor Pice was a traveling trader, he said. The man could be anywhere.

Anywhere but where we’ve been going, Corbyn thought with a roll of his eyes.

His father raised his left brow at the tone but made no effort to chide the boy as he so often would. An odd non-happening of sorts. The man was a stickler for respect. A common occurrence Corbyn had noticed among tradesmen.

Keeping on, his father swept his arms wide in exaggerated gestures, gesticulating to nothing, yet everything, in particular as he did so. “Of the roads walked, be they perfectly paved, cracked, or soiled - of the waters slogged: the marshes, rivers, creeks, coves, and coasts; and, every person or other you’ve happened into at some point,” his father detailed with a wave. “I’m speaking of this island, Corb.” At this point in his unsolicited soliloquy, he stopped to face the boy with sudden force.

His father had kept to affable fashions up unto that point but from there he took to something Corbyn had never seen in him. There was such an intensity to his countenance, a demand for attention, that Corbyn nearly recoiled. Of course, the man had always the capacity for intensity in times before. The simple difference now versus then being that he had never been the sole target of its forceful passions before. “What do you think of Providence?” he asked.

Prepared to give an unthought answer, the boy swallowed his response beneath the taller man’s reproachful eye. What gives, he complained to himself. What’s with him today? All serious. Corbyn averted his eyes from his father’s and rubbed his neck sheepishly.

The man’s hard brown eyes softened at the sight. “Come,” his father motioned him forward. “Think about it while we walk.”

Corbyn nodded and stepped into his father’s pace as they continued onward, tracing his eyes over the lands and waters the man spoke so passionately of and fading into thought, his feet trekking forward with an autonomous afterthought. He and his father, two of the rarer kind of inhabitants, who had seen or been to just about every nook of the island had earned the leeway to be so unobservant.

The sun beat on his exposed skin. Itchy and unpleasant were among the first words Corbyn would have described the day with.

Having left home at daylight’s break, they had traipsed high and low on a journey that had begun from the cragged strip of blue-collar enterprises they called home but had been officially christened Brigham Street, a turn of phrase for Bridge Street apparently. It was named such for its place in between the island’s upper-class bourgeoisie, men and women of inherited values, and the impoverished seafarers of the south - well as far as you could get into the sea without disappearing, Corbyn noted morbidly.

One community sat on a high-rising plateau on the northern reaches of the island, while the other was made up of long, wide gullies spanning all across the south, deep trenches of dried earth that once filled with water and made up all sorts of rumbling rivers and subtle streams.

Neither stratum quite liked the other but both shared a dislike for Brigham Street. They called it “the Brig”, and those from it Brigs. The Plats thought them the entrepreneurial poor while the Gullies thought them lackeys of the elite. Not one or the other was entirely incorrect either.

Thinking so far, Corbyn believed himself to have found a reasoned response. “It’s divisive,” he said, and he carried with him a touch of somber spirit as he continued, “It’s a tribal place, isn’t it? This island.”

Ducking below an overhang of spattered flora, his father turned his head and quirked his brow, a look the observant boy had grown to understand as ‘explain further’.

Corbyn reflected for a moment and replied to the man’s unasked question, “I don’t feel like I fit in here, in this place where I must be one thing or another.”

“Right,” his father nodded. “This place tries to define you.”

And Corbyn readily agreed. “Yeah! It’s not fair.”

“Don’t be naive, Corbyn,” the man admonished with unexpected harshity. “Life isn’t fair.”

The bespectacled man gathered himself with a breath before he continued in sophistry. “This island only magnifies the lens through which we experience it. We are creatures trapped in limbo, sorting ourselves by tribal associations is one way in which we cope with that truth. And it is a truth, mind you, that we socially regress in times of conflict. We take sides,” he tapped his son’s shoulder to bring his attention to the man’s next point. “But there are times when taking sides is not the correct action to take. If you claim neither part, ignore what people say about you. You are not stupid for committing to a middle thought. You are wise for doing so. That is how I view the ongoing politics that swirl around this speck of dirt we call an island. It is a speck, confined by vast waters on all sides.” His father paused to push his glasses up after a steep incline in terrain, adding, “Well, not that we have really seen those waters,” he grunted.

“You’ve read the books about that, right? Those old ones.”

Haven fallen sullen at his father’s rebuke and then thoughtful with the disheveled man’s following remarks, Corbyn perked up at the mention of old books, his eyes finally bore light again.

“Of course, I have!”

”And what have you learned,” the wiry man asked back.

“I read that Providence is just a small island! That there are whole entire countries out there just across the waters!” Corbyn excitedly retold stories he’d read from the old books. They described a place he had never been but felt like he could actually see, that he could touch with his mind. “Kingdoms, nations, and even empires that have risen and fallen over hundreds of thousands of years,” Corbyn awed.

His father chuckled despite himself and nodded along as they climbed out of a deserted gully and made further southward on the island. “That’s right. Outside of Providence is a whole wide world,” the sandy-haired man, himself, marveled. What the father and son seemed to lack in a physical resemblance, they made up for in their shared thirst for knowledge. They were an infinitely curious couple.

Corbyn looked to his father in askance. “What does that have to do with it?”

“With what, boy?” the man smirked. “Explain yourself before you expect someone else to do the same.”

“Wha—?” Corbyn guffawed, tripping over his feet in disbelief. “Hypocrite!”

His father laughed at that. It was the first time he’d laughed so genuinely all day. It came from a place deep in his heart and escaped through lilting lips. “When you hold the position of power, you are allowed to take certain exceptions from the rules,” the man chuckled. “Explanations being one of them!” Corbyn rolled his eyes as his father harped on. “Well, I guess what you told me is what brought this all up,” the man replied with awkward indecision, as if he were sorting through thoughts aloud but attempting to filter what he said.

“What about it?” Corbyn followed up. He was curious about the connection.

His father took time in their jaunt to ponder his response. While he did so, Corbyn noted that they had come further south than even he himself had gone. In fact, they were nearing an infamous monument of Providence’s dread when his father spoke again.

The man looked to his son intently. “What do you know about what happened last night?” he asked with a furrowed brow.

Corbyn shook his head and combed the hair that dropped over his eyes backward again, “I can’t explain it. It felt...I don’t know, unexplainable, I guess.”

It was an empty response but his father gave an unexpected nod. “It is unexplainable, isn’t it? How did you get burned underwater? How did you get so cold?” his father asked rhetorically. “It isn’t a situation that we can claim to understand. And isn’t that weird? Everything that we’ve read and nothing can explain the goings-on of these things.”

“Things?”

Corbyn’s remark caused the man to hesitate. Instead of an immediate response, his father gripped his cloth-covered arm in a way that seemed unconscious of the action. The motion spurred in Corbyn some analysis, however. He remembered that beneath the cotton sleeve of his father’s navy blue workshop uniform was another burn that he had forgotten about. It had been years ago now and was another cause that he couldn’t explain.

During one memorable insole composition, Corbyn had grown so frustrated with his work that he had thrown the shoe across the room. What was odd was that it had caught fire at some point and that fire had spread around the shop, nearly burning the building down had his father not reigned it in so quickly. Corbyn knew the memory clearly. It was how da’ got that scar, he recalled, referring to the large burn scar across his father’s forearm.

“Right. Things. You burned yourself underwater. That is one thing. But Providence itself is another,” the man declared, conspicuously excluding the workshop fire. Corbyn took the segue in stride. He blamed himself for the matter of his injury, though he couldn’t explain why.

“The island?”

“Yes. That’s the most unexplainable thing - isn’t it?” The man answered and asked. Typical.

“We’ve read all of these old books about how the world works and yet we experience things we cannot understand. Why?”

Corbyn shrugged his shoulders. He wanted an answer, himself. His father didn’t offer one, however. He simply continued working out his own thoughts aloud. “That’s exactly right. We just don’t know. And that’s what got me thinking that there’s really more to this than we think. That there’s something going on that’s been hidden from us.”

Corbyn gulped. A part-time lecturer would describe his father aptly, but today felt different.

Yeah, there’s something different about today, Corbyn worried.

“What do you think is being hidden?” the boy asked with a growing beast of burden looming near the corners of his mind, namely anxiety.

“I can’t...say for sure. But it’s what I asked the vendor about last time I saw him.”

Corbyn raised his head in epiphany. “The Ghost of Providence?”

His father nodded.

“Does it explain what’s happening?” The curious boy asked, unable to hide the urgency from his voice; and, there was an urgency there, however little he understood the reason for it.

The man with longer steps wouldn’t confirm nor deny the question. He simply ambled ahead, letting his back speak for him - and when Corbyn listened to it, it said, ‘Enough’.

“What does it say? Do you understand it now? I— “ I’m worried, is what Corbyn couldn’t bring himself to say, because saying something aloud felt like you were giving it substance.

“Just give me an answer!”

His patience had grown too thin and he knew it.

“I’m sorry, but can you please just answer my questions, da’!”

He thought that his shout had finally elicited a response from his father, as the silent man had stopped and Corbyn walked right into his broad back. He’d figured he’d finally get an answer, but his father had other intentions. “We’re here,” he said and turned his head. “Vendor Price is just up ahead.”

His father looked forward once again and Corbyn belatedly came to see what his father could by peering around him.

They’d come to the tail of a long, descending trail some miles along the furthest southern coast and upon some malnourished dock. Corbyn knew the place at once, if only by reputation. It was the monument he had given idle thought not too long ago. The monument of Providence’s despair.

He hadn’t seen it before because it wasn’t anywhere anyone particularly needed to know about anymore

Nothing anybody needed to see. A large and misshapen shipping yard was all it looked to be. The vestiges of something grand, he was sure that it was. Maybe at one point, it had been so, but so many years of misgiven care had turned it to naught but splinters and rust.

“The Ghostyard,” he murmured. The one place he had never truly been. His father had never allowed it.

Nobody does, though Corbyn had heard whispers.

Around the pub where drunken men spoke with loose lips, he’d been lucky enough to grab a few words about the dock. Even when drunk the men spoke of it sadly, as if they mourned the yard and those boats about it. They called it the place where hope found horror and life sailed to death, for no man had ever sailed out and come back with breath. Not for ninety-nine years at least, he noted, and then wondered what might change come the next.

“We’re here,” his father added once more for good measure when Corbyn had found his bearings. “Now stay quiet and you’ll have all the answers you want once we return.” His father looked ahead, lost in thought a moment. “Right now though, I have some questions I need answered first.”

Corbyn gave a begrudged nod and kept further questions to himself. He didn’t see the vendor around but nodded anyway. All the while quite not able to shake the feeling that something was wrong with his father today. Something very wrong.

They walked down to the dock, a weathered thing sun-faded a light, near greyish-brown, and stepped around decrepit dinghies and their betters. The father and son finally found an odd yet ordinary carriage somewhere in the middle of things. It was odd, not by general appearance but by circumstance and context.

Corbyn looked the rigging up and down as well as the two horses that drew it, and felt things were out of place: there were no carriage tracks or hoof prints leading to or from anywhere, no sweat on the horses nor crack on the wheels. Despite the long journey that Corbyn knew the vendor must have taken, there was nothing that would explain any wear or usage of anything. It was as pristine as if it had popped into being right when they walked up to it.

Corbyn’s intrigue was put to the side as his father shouted ahead, “Vendor Pice!” the man boomed, his baritone shook loose floorboards and kicked up nails. “Vendor Pice!” he called again, just as loud.

“Aye, aye, I hear you,” a voice complained from inside the carriage. “Aren’t I the only soul here? Why the need to shout, boy? Do you want to deafen this poor old man?”

“Boy? Old man?” His father questioned the raspy voice with a smirk. “You can’t be that much older than me, yourself, Pice,” he chuckled.

An irritated stomp resounded from inside the carriage. “Bah, who are you to question your elders, boy? Let me get a look at yer babyface and mayhap I’ll feel a tad more my age,” the vendor declared. With a smooth swing, the door to the odd carriage came unbound and swung open with greater gumption than Corbyn had expected from an old man.

And from the shadowed, open frame showed the man’s appearance. It was a surprisingly handsome figure, albeit oddly configured. The ‘old man’ seemed to Corbyn to be no older than forty, though he would have thought late thirties had the man’s face not been marred by crows feet and its eyes that thing all elders seemed to share. What was it, he pondered to himself. Something like wisdom, but not exactly so. Experience? Maybe, he thought. Maybe it’s just age.

“Ah, jee,” Vendor Pice exclaimed. “Wasn’t I just right. Look at you. You could be my great-grandson!”

“Who’s great-grandson, you old coot?” his father smiled. “You could be my dad at most!” Corbyn hid a smile too behind his hand as he listened to his father’s loose tongue. He thought that his father must quite like this ‘old man’ because rarely did he speak so informally with his elders. Where was the stickler for respect? Corbyn chuckled

“What would you know, boy,” the vendor scoffed at his father, rolling his eyes as he scratched at his perfectly intact hairline, with nails that were not so long and pointy as Corbyn would have expected from someone old. The trader continued on as the most mysterious smile ghosted his lips for just a moment, his eyes wandered from his father to himself so momentarily that Corbyn believed that it may not have even happened at all. “I could be your ancestor, you little git,” he boasted and laughed. “The little one gets it, at least,” the old man chortled through sun-cracked lips and raggedy teeth, as he gave Corbyn a quick up-and-down. “He’s already looking at me like I’m senile!”

Corbyn cringed. He’s not wrong, he admitted. The man hadn’t exactly inspired a whole lot of confidence with the way he carried himself.

Dressed in the meekest amount of clothing, the ‘old man’ was without trousers, and only the trail of his long and red, linen shirt kept his human undercarriage from exposure. He’s mad, Corbyn thought immediately. It was an instinctual feeling really. He couldn’t recall having ever seen a madman but somehow he saw it so clearly in this vendor — so obviously plain. And he wondered to himself if madness was always so simple to see.

“Anywho,” the old man cackled. “What can I do for you this fine day, Jacob? Here to steal some more of my books?” He accused his father with a grin Corbyn thought looked rather manic.

The younger man's smile retracted and he replied stoically, “I bought them from you.”

The vendor spat on the ground and jeered at that. “Books of the like I gave to you are priceless, young man. What I sold them for is basically theft!”

His father scoffed. “Who’s fault is that? I don’t set the prices. Besides, if you wanted wealth, old man, you’d have it,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Bah, what do you know about what I do? It’s hard selling to the ungrateful,” the curly-haired man objected.

His father shook his head, sighed, and looked to the ships around the yard. “Why are out on the docks, Pice? You’re not going to sell to anyone out here. You must know that.”

“I show up where I need to,” the vendor said mysteriously. He chortled into a hand and the skin around the man’s face contracted around blue eyes. “You’re here aren’t you?" The father had no response to that and so the vendor continued, “So then what do you want from me this time, young Jacob?”

While the two of them bantered, off to the side Corbyn’s eyes resembled great, wide saucers on his face. He had always wondered where his father had found those old books. And to find out in this way, in this place, that this man, with this dress, and this carriage, was the source of all of the things he’d loved to learn, Corbyn’s mind was aflame. He had so many questions. Too many to decide on a single one. And the boy was giddy with anticipation as he awaited the chance to ask them all.

“Tell me what you want already! If I’d known you just wanted to insult my business practices, I wouldn’t have shown up” The apparently old - now well respected to Corbyn - man grumbled, scratching the pepper-colored mop below his chin.

His father’s demeanor to his side is what kept Corbyn from voicing his inquiries. He witnessed in the corner of his eye the man’s jaw tighten and his knuckles shed their color for a more white strain as he clenched them tightly.

“I came to ask you about the last one you gave me. That book,” his father paused and Corbyn could swear he could grab the air, it grew so thick in the man’s silence. “That ghost story,” he continued. “Can I really believe what it implies?”

Vendor Pice looked to his father in thoughtful regard, giving only a question in return. “Does it explain the things you couldn’t explain before?” he asked. Vague and open-ended. Quite the same way his father spoke to him, Corbyn thought.

“It goes against everything you’ve taught me,” the younger man asserted.

The Vendor quirked that same brow his father did. Is that where he gets it from, Corbyn wondered aside.

“But have I taught you everything?”

His father contemplated a moment before he responded. “Then it’s true? Something like that really exists?” His father spoke as if he knew the answer, but couldn’t quite accept it.

“It is, yes. And it does,” the older man confirmed, looking to Corbyn for some reason. “You should know that better than most. You’ve seen it first hand.”

His father swallowed a thick gulp of nerves as he spilled out his final question. It seemed the most important to him. Maybe even the entire reason they came out today. “And the Harrowbirds and Lightlys?”

The vendor nodded, and his father closed his eyes tight as the tradesman bore witness with mute sympathy. Corbyn had no idea what the two were talking about but it aggravated a feeling he’d felt all day. Foreboding.

The old man asked the father, whose breath was catching in his throat, “What are you going to do?” and Corbyn did not like the way that the vendor had asked that question. The old man had shaped his question into a form of warning.

“Now that I know what’s going on, I need to get answers,” his father told the mysterious Vendor with newfound conviction.

“It might not go well,” the vendor reasoned, to which his father weakly smiled.

“I could always give you the answers you want, you know. With a price, of course.” The old man grinned.

“I know that,” his father heaved a strained breath. “But I - I want to be selfish for once.” He rubbed his neck and sighed. “I want to ask you about that thing you told me about a few days ago.” He looked to Corbyn and back hesitantly and mouthed the word: ‘wine’.

The vendor asked whether that was the best idea or not, though he’d already headed into his carriage to rummage for what Corbyn assumed was the wine in question. He seemed eager to Corbyn.

Alone with his father, Corbyn finally grasped onto an opportunity to speak. “Is Vendor Pice really the one who gave us all those books?” he wondered aloud over the din of an old man rifling through his wares. There were more questions he needed answered but that one was a question he felt compelled to ask. It was just too unbelievable to him.

“Oh, yes,” his father assured him with a soft chuckle. “He may seem a tad...he may not be all the way there, but he is by far the smartest man I’ve ever known”

Corbyn nodded despite his disbelief and walked over to the horses harnessed to the carriage. He ambled around to their large heads and pet them each with a careful hand. Their white coats were soft and clean, very clean, spotless even, and their white manes curtained over amber eyes that peeked through subtly. There was something spotty about them, Corbyn thought. Their eyes...they don’t look alive.

Whatever reverie they induced, the low grumbling coming from the carriage just beside him drew his attention instead. He walked over slowly and pressed an ear against the mahogany side. From there he could hear the soft mumbling of the vendor inside, though the words were hard to catch and harder still to describe.

“I see, I see. And so it ought be. A potion for the pain, for this child you remedy. And, though the boy shall forget, you’ll seek out the others with a lack of regret. But you owe a price, and the price is the end. Oh, young Jacob! - It’s with this end you defend this old man’s dream and the ward you upend...”

Corbyn removed his ear from the side and shook his head with a light scoff. So he really was a madman.

He went to go tell his father about the old man’s odd ramblings, but the man’s countenance convinced him otherwise. Better later, he thought. A good thing too, since the vendor left his carriage that moment. “Oh, right! I forgot to tell you about the price of the book and this wine,” he bubbled.

His father frowned and reached for his pocket. “I don’t remember you ever asking me for money. Hold on. How much?”

The vendor waved his father’s wallet away with a disgusted look. “I don’t want any of that useless paper. No,” he shook his head. “I just wanted to let you know that you don’t need to worry about paying for them. Someone else will take care of it.”

“Someone else?”

“Yes,” the vendor smiled as he placed the corked construct of deep, green glass into his father’s hands. “It’s for the house.”

“You mean on the house?” his father questioned as he took the bottle with meaningful care.

“For the house - on the house,” the vendor waved it away. “It’s the same thing either way.”

“Uh-huh..,” Corbyn had never seen his father so befuddled. “I’ll keep that in mind,” the man said with an awkward chuckle.

The vendor shooed them away then, saying, “No need to worry about it anymore. You’ve taken the wine so just worry about putting it to good use now.”

His father wrapped his fingers around the container, his fingers shook as he caressed the bottle in big hands. He looked to his son but still seemed to speak to the vendor. “If I…,” he petered out along a crack of his voice.

The old man followed his gaze to Corbyn and gave a slow nod, understanding his father’s intentions in ways the boy wished he could. Their conversation had gone much over his head. It frustrated him.

“I will, boy. Trust me on that if nothing else.”

His father paused and bowed as the mad vendor tucked, turned, and tarried back to the confines of his odd carriage, where he closed the door without looking back and his horses took him away on practiced legs. The gesture took the boy by surprise; he’d never seen his father bow to anyone before.

“Thank you, Vendor Pice.”

***

Having bid their farewells in ominous fashions, Corbyn and his father returned home in similar straits. The journey had been quiet, a silence the brooding man seemed to enforce in simply willing it. Their return took many hours but the duo eventually did so under the moon’s steady ascent. His father made dinner and the two ate in equidistant stillness. As if the air was fraught with unbreathable fumes, both opened their mouths for food but kept them wound tight otherwise, partaking in nothing but the food and drink, a bit of protein alongside some bread and the wine his father had received from Vendor Pice and uncorked just before the meal. His hair stood upright when presented with the drink.

Da’ never lets me drink.

Watching his father clear the table once they’d finished eating, he tardily understood why he’d been given the drink as he motioned to assist.

The decrepit chair beneath him let out not a creak in all its cragged composition, an impossibility given its age. It wasn’t that it hadn’t made a sound, Corbyn had come to grasp, so much as it altogether hadn’t moved.

Because he didn’t move. He couldn’t. Not a leg. Not an arm. Not a lip. Not a muscle. He sat entirely immobile, the treble of his eye the only tell-tale that he was even awake.

Having washed his own dishes, his father moved to take his before noticing the boy’s hush. The light brown in the man’s eyes revealed a sadness to the circumstance, but no surprise. This was his intention, Corbyn understood. But he couldn’t understand.

He was scared. Why had he done this to me?

His father’s eyes damned with water ready to spill as he looked at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” he choked behind a guilty half-smile. “I don’t like this any more than you do,” he explained sadly. “But I have some things I wanted to tell you before I leave...though, if the wine works as it is supposed to, you won’t remember any of it.” He shook his head. “I just need to relieve my heart of these burdens if this is my last time speaking with you- er to you, I guess.” He gave a self-deprecating chuckle and wiped mist from his corners.

He understood what his father meant as soon as he explained it. His head felt as if it had been gripped between rocks. As if the present was slipping from his memory, the moments passed by, each there and gone before he could take hold of them.

His mind was fading from view.

His father took a deep, shaky breath before continuing with tenuous calm. “I promised you answers before, and a man of his word keeps to it like grapes to the vine,“ he explained slowly.

“I asked what you thought of Providence earlier, and you asked me why,” his father paused in thought.

“I asked because I wanted you to think about what this island is. What it really is. Providence’s situation is entirely mysterious and without a natural explanation. And if natural variables can’t explain events, what did I teach you was the most likely answer?” his father nodded along, like he was working the answers out himself as he spoke, analyzing his own logic. “It’s the human variable,” he announced to the room. Corbyn had come to understand by this point that his father wasn’t particularly speaking to him. He just wanted him to hear.

“Yes, the human variable,” he repeated in a hush. “The answer to the question of Providence has been hidden from us. Why can we not leave? Think about that. Knowing all of the things we know, what is the one thing that we don’t?” he asked himself. “We don’t know why we can’t leave. It is unexplainable.” His father’s chair made small groans of complaint beneath his grip. He was growing frustrated with his own thought process. “How could we have known that reality wasn’t exactly how our history had explained it. We have been left grasping for straws that no longer exist.”

“Our ignorance of things has caused this family immeasurable suffering,” he spoke with a shudder. “You’ve suffered because we didn’t know. Your mother and I suffered too for our ignorance...Your father likely suffers as well, if for different reasons.”

The man of solemn spirits paused to meet Corbyn’s eyes. The man must have been met with the devastation the boy felt because he understood enough to look remorseful. “You look betrayed.”

He sighed. “Yes, Corb. You are not mine by birth. You are another’s.” He threw his jacket around his arms and put on his hat.

“He’s a good man but his circumstances put him in a difficult position, I’m sure. Especially with what I’ll have to ask of him tonight.”

His father sighed. A vacancy brimmed within his sockets, his eyes had left for a place far away. A destination deep within himself. “I say I’m doing this for you, but I’m not even sure anymore...I want answers. I’ve done so many things for other people. Can’t I just be selfish for once?”

The tenure of the man’s voice fractured to bits, his teeth dug into his lips. “Everyone else can be, but never me,” he cracked, taking a moment to reel himself back in. “Life isn’t fair, Corbyn,” he whispered, repeating the same thing the grieving man had said to Corbyn hours earlier, this time he was the target, himself. “And if you remember anything of this night, I hope it would be my parting words.” Tears tore through his toughened eyes then. They fell like large droplets from the sky.

“I love you, Corbyn. You are going to learn a great many things about yourself in the coming days but I want you to know that regardless of anything else, Corb, you will always be my boy.” He disheveled Corbyn’s hair with affection and kissed his forehead before making for the door. “Keep your chin up, boy. Keep your eyes sharp,” his father swiveled its handle and the hinges swung open. “And remember, Corb, always keep looking and learning.”

The door closed with his words, but Corbyn’s eyes had glazed over who knows when. All he was left with as his father went through the door was a single tear that fell across his cheek...but who knew whether it was his or his father’s.