When The Sun Comes Up

By the time I finished opening the store and waiting for the other employees to arrive, the sun was already starting to peek over the horizon. I sighed, seeing my night hours slip away as quickly as ever. By the time I got home, the kids would surely be awake, offering me no chance of quiet as the day begun. No matter, they’d be off to school within the hour, so hopefully I could get in a little rest before class starts.

As I rounded the corner of the store, walking towards my parked car, I saw my dead father. He was wearing a big brown jacket that I had never seen before. I slowed, in equal parts shock and confusion. He didn’t seem to notice me as he lifted the cigarette in between his black-stained fingertips to his lips, taking a long drag before lowering his arm again. Since when did he start smoking? I wondered.

I neared closer to the man, his features becoming clearer with each step. His haircut was the same as always, his beard a bit longer but in the same general shape. His eyes, squinty with a little moisture in the corners, looked up at me, and I could feel the familiarity in them.

“Hi,” I said slowly. He looked me up and down as if he didn’t know why I would be talking to him.

“What’s up?” he said finally, his brows furrowing. He took another long drag.

“Um, I just-do I know you?” I asked.

He took a while to answer, cocking his head to the side and looking over me again. Finally, his eyes widened, and he started to nod.

“Yeah, you’re Aisha, right?” he said.

I sucked in a breath. I’m sure my eyes looked as bewildered as I felt.

“You work at the corner bakery, right there down the street. I used to come in every week and get a dozen from you a while back.”

I released my breath. Right. He used to be a regular customer. He would come in to get donuts or cupcakes or some other treat for his family. Three kids, he explained one day. When he opened his wallet to pay, he had a picture of his wife and kids. I fought back tears realizing that he was just a strange man, and my dad was still dead.

“Right, right. Haven’t seen you in a while.” I said with as much of a smile as I could muster. He shrugged and didn’t offer anything more, so I turned and continued in the direction of my car. Before I could get too far, he called out, “hey! Are you okay?” I’m not sure if it’s because of the exhaustion, or the sadness, or my impending insanity, but he even sounds like him. My heartbeat sped up and suddenly I’m a kid again holding back tears from some minor inconvenience.

He always used to unlock the top lock before the bottom. He always got his haircut on Thursday afternoons, and if he were even a day off schedule, he would use any free moment looking in the mirror and criticizing his hair. He danced as he ate, a trait he passed onto me. He’s also dead, and he’s not supposed to be haunting me in my waking hours as I’m on my way to the other two kids he left behind.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I called out, “You should come back in for another dozen sometime. Maybe I can hook you up.” I didn’t try to hide the tears running down my face at this point. While the sun was still rising, I was too far, and it was too dark for him to see.  

“Yeah, maybe we’ll see about that.” He took one final drag of his cigarette before flicking it to the ground and stomping it with his foot. I expected him to start walking in whatever direction he had to go, but he continued to stand there, pushing his hands into his coat pockets. I realized I didn’t know if he was even supposed to be anywhere, or if he was just…standing.

Quickly wiping my eyes, I called out, “do you need a ride somewhere?” This was the first time he seemed genuinely surprised by anything this morning.

“Nah, it’s cool. The bus should be here in a half-hour or so.”

    “It’s no problem at all. Come on.” I got in the car then, letting my confidence persuade him into joining me. I heard my dad’s voice, my real dead dad’s voice, asking me what on Earth was I doing letting a strange man into my car. I replied in my head: it’s fine because he’s you. I didn’t know how this made sense to me, but it did.

He slid into the passenger seat, promptly putting on his seatbelt. That was the first big deviation. My dad had a bad habit of not wearing his seatbelt. The car filled with the suffocating cigarette smell, and I hope I didn’t offend him as I cranked my window down a bit.        

“I work at the warehouse on 6^th and Irving,” he said, “if that’s alright.” It was on the complete opposite side of town which meant that he must live around here. I glanced at the clock, 5:37 it read. The kids would be getting up really soon in order to get ready for school. I really didn’t have time to be doing this.

But it’s your dad.

    We drove mostly in silence. I wanted to ask more about his wife and his kids, but I thought that might make me even sadder that I wasn’t among them. Besides the seatbelt, the coat, and the cigarette, I didn’t want to create more deviations in my delusion. For the time being, I needed him to be my dead dad that wasn’t dead right now.

By the time we arrived at the warehouse, it was twenty after six. I had gotten two phone calls from the kids, and I finally picked up on the third, telling them to make sure they caught their bus because I might not make it before they leave. When I hung up, he looked over at me and asked “kids?” with a sort of shocked expression.

“Siblings, two of them, younger,” I replied. He nodded like he understood, which I guess he did.

The sun was completely over the horizon now, already seeming to warm up the chilly dawn air. When I turned to say goodbye to him, his face was illuminated in the golden rays of the early morning sun, and I saw the differences. He looked less like my dad than I had thought. He was older, much older than my dad had been, and his hair was grown out longer than my dad had ever worn his. His beard was the same, but the mustache wasn’t, and he wasn’t wearing any earrings. He smiled, unbuckling his seatbelt, and reaching for the car door, ready to leave.

“Thanks for the ride. See ya kid, have a good day,” he said, before getting out and walking into the warehouse. As I looked ahead as the sun peaked over the roof. Through my tears, the sun looked glittered and speckled.

He still sounded exactly the same.