A Son's Love

Trigger warning for mentions of physical abuse, substance abuse, and mental health.

The evening sun shone down red over the mountainside. In the glowing light the forest below almost appeared to be on fire, autumn leaves burning brilliant scarlet and orange, interlaced with gold. October’s sharp, crisp breeze stirred the leaves to dance like the flames of summertime’s wildfires had done only a few months earlier. A sea of colour stretched as far as the eye could see, seeming to disappear off the horizon. Ben imagined some great fire creeping Eastward to swallow up the rest of the world, leaving only him alone on this high peak. 

It wouldn’t be so bad to have a reason to stay up here forever. He didn’t want to go home, now or ever. The thought of sitting alone in that dark, too-quiet apartment was almost too much to bear. If he went back to it now, he might just light it up and start the next great fire of Vancouver. Or he might simply crawl into his bed with a bottle of jack and never come back out. 

He wished he had thought to stop at the liquor store on the long drive here. But his mind had been in another place, another time. 

Back when he was still Benny, back when his father had been a part of the world of the living. It felt so long ago though he knew it hadn’t truly been so long- he supposed dad had been alive the last decade and a half to the world, but not to him. Ben’s dad had died years ago. 

His father had been a provider, “last of a dying breed,” as he had liked to say. He had been a simple man. The classic blue collar worker who labored hard every day, building beautiful two or three-story homes for families more fortunate than his. Every night he came home aching with muddy boots and blistered hands, and ruled his house with an iron fist. 

When Ben was a small boy, his father would let him sit by his knee after dinner while he watched TV in his Laz-Y Boy armchair. Dad would watch the hockey game, beer in hand, and when their team did well sometimes Ben would get a sip. When dad was working Ben would get to sit in that big, comfortable black seat. He would curl up in the dent made by years of his father sitting in the same spot and listen to mama singing from the kitchen. It always smelled like the cigarette smoke that clung to dad. When dad was home no one ever touched his chair. The one time he had tried, dad had made him run 60 laps around their trailer home - dad didn’t want any LAZY BOY for a son. 

Ben had looked up to his father greatly. He had tried for many years to make the man satisfied. Happy, proud? Well that was never in the books. Just to keep the man’s mood from turning black as rich, fertile soil took everything in Ben and his mama. It hadn’t always been like that though. 

Ben remembered a time when his father would come home and his face would brighten to see mama after work. But the years wore hard on a man who felt he must carry the world on his shoulder, and by the time Ben hit double digits his father’s only joy was escaping into a bottle at the end of the night. Mama stopped singing when he was home. 

Some days she would get up in the morning and draw herself a bath. Ben would wait hours for her to get out. When his bladder began to scream he would crouch on the floor, grasping himself in a desperate attempt to hold it in. He found himself urinating in the sink, praying mama wouldn’t choose that particular moment to climb out of the cold bathwater and rejoin the real world. The thought of going into that bathroom and facing her terrified him. Deep down he thought he knew what she was doing in there for hours, and he couldn’t stand to see his mother cry. He knew this made him a coward, and so he would sit on the other side of the door and pray for forgiveness, hoping his presence meant something. 

Dad had been coming home later and later. Some nights Ben could hear them arguing through the wall, hear his father’s harsh tone and his mother’s tears. 

Mama said she knew what he had been doing, that that was fine “so long as that floozy means you’ll stay away from me at night”. Father would curse at her, and at last Ben would hear a sharp smack and “go to sleep you crazy woman!” and then there would be silence at last. 

It was a simple fact of life that Ben both loved his father, and was terrified of the man. He never dreamed of standing up to him until he met Charlie. 

They were both skinny kids waiting for a growth spurt to hit when they met. Charlie was the shortest boy in their class. From day one of grade seven his name was no longer Charlie according to the rest of the boys, it was Dwarf. For most of school, Ben had gotten along okay. He wasn’t particularly bright, but when he kept his head down he would get there eventually. Unfortunately it was hard for him to keep his head down. Mr. Briggs seated the boys together so that Charlie, a quiet and focused student, could help Ben stay on track. 

It worked out a little differently than the teacher had hoped. Right from day one, Ben found himself liking Charlie more than he had expected. The other boy was strangely interesting. Beneath his mild demeanor hid a surprisingly sharp wit. Charlie was the type of person who was always observing, listening. He knew how to play their teacher like a fiddle and could even convince Mr. Briggs to let them stay in class at recess to work on their book reports on days when he knew the bigger boys would be waiting for them outside. 

Charlie knew all sorts of jokes and stories Ben had never heard before, the type he imagined his father would trade with the other gruff working men at the bar. Jokes that made Ben’s chest hurt from laughing. He pointed out how Jackson (who liked to poke fun at Ben’s ginger hair) always smelled like fish. When Jackon laughed at him, Ben would just sit smiling, glad his father wasn’t a fisherman. At least he didn’t stink. 

He began hanging out (not playing, he was too old for that now) with Charlie after school. They found that if they walked the long way to Charlie’s house, Ben could cut through the baseball field and get back to the trailer park in under five minutes to do his chores before dad got home. Every day he had a couple hours to mess around after school with Charlie, walking around town to avoid going home. Charlie understood what it was like to never want to go home. Not because you were having fun but because home was something dark and dreary, an oppressive shadow that seems to suck the life out of you. 

See, what Ben had learned quickly was that Charlie lived with his grandparents. His parents were Out Of The Picture. His grandparents were getting older and needed his help around the house, but apart from that they preferred he was out of the way. Children should be seen and not heard, that was what they believed. Charlie had told Ben once that they had not wanted to raise their daughter, let alone their grandson. But that was what they had got. Charlie figured if they had raised his mom better then maybe they wouldn’t be stuck with him.  

At fourteen, they both dreamed of being old enough to start driving. Every dollar Ben earned helping his neighbours on the weekends went into his sock drawer. Someday he hoped there would be enough to buy his first car, a bright red one. Ben drooled over the shiny Ford his uncle drove up in when he’d come by to visit. 

 They talked of driving to Alberta and finding work in the oil fields where they could make more money than their fathers, where they could finance big trucks and get a mortgage on a real house. Or driving to Quebec to learn French and meet girls, working by day and clubbing by night. They dreamed of road-tripping through the States. To go surfing in California, to gamble in Vegas, to see the Hollywood sign looming above them. 

Though their dreams were similar, Ben knew their reasons were very different and the knowledge of his own reason made him feel terribly guilty at times. He knew Charlie’s biggest wish of all (though he would never dare to say it out loud for fear it would jinx it all) was to see his mother again. Yet Ben had a mother at home, and a father, and all he wanted was to grow up faster so he could get away from them. Yes, he loved them deeply but the need to escape kept growing - to escape his father’s anger, his father’s brutal view of life. To get away from his mother’s desperation, the sadness she carries with her, the bleak shadow of the life she wanted and didn’t get. 

He wasn’t sure when it happened, but something changed over the summer. Maybe it was the knowledge they were going into high school when the seasons turned. Maybe it was the fact that when they returned to school, the girls in their class had suddenly grown and looked to be much older than the boys, and had started giggling over Jackson’s broad shoulders. Maybe it clicked when he watched Emma Hodges let her crush kiss her on the lips, and they became the first in the grade to start “dating”. 

Whatever it was, it hit Ben that unlike the other boys, he didn’t want to get a girlfriend. He backed away and pretended to need the bathroom when the boys started trying to peek in the girl’s locker room. He didn’t understand why the other boys stared whenever Emma wore a tank top. And sometimes at night, he would dream of Charlie. He knew this wasn’t how he was supposed to feel as a teenage boy, but no matter how he tried he couldn’t make himself dream of a girl. 

When he kissed Charlie for the first time, they had been drinking a six pack stolen from Ben’s dad. The beers had given him a sort of warm, fuzzy feeling as though his body had been wrapped up in a cozy set of armor, protecting him from any worry or consequence. Somehow, he had known Charlie would kiss him back. 

The shock of moisture on Ben’s face brought his mind back to the present. For a moment he thought he had begun crying, but it was only the rain that had started while he was lost in memory. Now the sun was setting, and the sky had turned deep purple and pink. Ha. Girly colours just for you dad. 

It had been years since he had thought of Charlie, of the first boy he’d kissed. One small action that had set his life onto such a strange path. Although a kiss hadn’t really been the trigger, no, the trigger had been getting caught. Things had really changed when Ben’s father came home early and discovered his son was a pansy, and kicked him to the curb at fifteen. 

Being thrown out and cut off had been both a gift and a curse. Finally he had the freedom he had dreamed of, but without a license or any belongings it was far from his dreams. Ben had found himself hitchhiking away from their small town with nothing but the shirt on his back. He pawned his cell phone, the only thing of value he had, and used the money to buy a ticket to Vancouver. 

With no money for a hotel, he had checked into a homeless shelter. That night an older woman shared a bottle with him, and the next morning she taught him how to survive on the streets. 

The next 15 years had been spent in a blur of alcohol living in shelters, grungy apartments, and occasionally tents. There had been love sometimes, yes, but always more pain came too. Life was never going to be easy for a man like Ben. He had reached a point where he saw no way to go but to get out. Still he kept on living, fighting through each day. His father had drilled into him young that you keep on going no matter what. 

When the call came in, Ben hadn’t been surprised. He was confused as to how they found his number, but what did that matter? Somehow they had. The doctor told him- as he knew they would- that his father had passed the week before, heart attack, they had been trying to track him down all week. He had numbly agreed to handle the arrangements, and the next morning he’d gotten up and started off on his way home. 

When he arrived home, for the first time in a decade and a half he felt like he had stepped into a different dimension. The house looked the same as it always had, just dirtier. Lonelier. He had not gone inside, the very idea terrified him. A scene had materialized in his mind: his mother sitting in the cold bathwater, sobbing. Waiting there for him to come home. He looked away. 

His father’s old car still sat in the driveway. It had started with little trouble, and carried him the same way it had carried his dad, down the highway, down the backroads, to the base of the trail his father had hiked so many times in his life. The hike up had been hard on him, though Ben walked everywhere in the city the climb made his chest burn. He guessed that was why his father had had to stop hiking by the time Ben was a teen. All those decades of smoking had damaged his once strong lungs to the point they could no longer handle the strain of climbing to reach fresh, sweet, unpolluted air.  

Well, Ben had made it to the top and he had made it on his own. And it felt damn good, despite the ache in his chest that refused to go away.  

Before the light faded more, he pulled the small box from his pocket. Half of dad was sitting in an urn beside mama, who had been gone for years now (Ben had not been invited to the funeral, had not even learned she was gone until months after). Half was in Ben’s hands, and the thought almost made him laugh. Your fate’s in my hands now, dad. How the tables have turned.

Part of him wanted to throw the box, bury it, curse at it, hope his father felt some of the pain he had. But another part of him wanted to keep holding onto it. This is the closest we’ve been in years, dad, isn’t that funny? 

In time Ben opened the box, pulled out the bag within. He held it up in the light of the setting sun and watched as his father’s ashes were picked up by the growing breeze. Dad (or the man who had once been dad) floated away into the pink sky, dancing away from him, finally free. 

This time there were no rain drops to blame. Ben cried for the father he missed, the father he had once had. He cried for the path that being disowned had set him on, the years wasted struggling to survive rather than living, and he cried for the years his father had spent alone and tired, bitter and disillusioned with his country. He cried for the lessons that had been beaten into his father, the judgement and “moral values” which had been too strong, too deeply ingrained to fight. The beliefs that had been so a part of who his father was he couldn’t possibly change them for fear of what change might do, who he might become. Beliefs that had beaten them both into their own cages, forced them to live lonely for all those years. He wished he could go back in time and meet his father as a boy, tell him he doesn’t need to be so tough, that it’s okay to show love. Try to tell him there’s never something wrong with loving another.  

I loved you, you old bastard. I still do. 

Ben set off down the mountain. The time had come to go home and face the ghosts that lived there.