A Homeless Known

The letter came for me when I was on one of my days off from the office. I was halfway through my cereal hoops when I heard it drift from the letter box and float to the muddy mat on the floor. ​I knew then that something was strange; the postman had already been, delivering junk mail and bills with a fake and wavering smile, just like he always did. I knew then that one of us was in trouble. 

The milk that escaped my mouth trickled down my chin and dripped back into the bowl, drip, drip, drip, and I swallowed my mouthful of hoops, which I knew were to be my last that morning, for my stomach had started to rumble as quick and as prominent as my heart had started to thump. 

I could not move from the stool at which I sat, and so found myself staring down towards my half eaten bowl of breakfast. In the milk floated the hoops that had bloated from absorption, and they bobbed on the liquid surface like a group of obese holiday makers on lilo’s in a swimming pool with a drink in one hand, and a burger in the other; with no care in the world, unlike me. 

I had still not been to get the letter, to open it and see, for I already knew what the letter was. I knew that it would have the red wax seal of a rocket keeping it shut. I knew it was asking for one of us; me, my Brother, or my Sister, and I knew what it wanted of us. 

Being 22 years old, I did not listen to my protesting gut, and instead went to my Fathers cupboard and downed a few mouthfuls of his finest whiskey. It burned my empty stomach and numbed it for the time being. Then, with the courage of a Dutchman, I went and collected the letter.

Of course I was right.

The red wax seal of a rocket told you nearly everything you needed to know, without even reading the letter. The only thing the wax seal didn’t tell you, if you were in a family like mine, was which child it wanted to take. And so before anything was to be done, we had to find out which one of us it was. 

I sat waiting with the un-opened letter on the kitchen table for my Mother and Father to get back and find out that this time, it was not one of their friend’s children that had to go up to the moon, it was one of theirs.

My Mother strolled in with two shopping bags hanging from her hands, and with her sunglasses perched on her head. She was directing her speech backwards, out the front door, to my Father who was following behind when she came into the kitchen. She saw me sitting there, silent, still, and then saw the letter on the kitchen table. She dropped the shopping bags and said nothing, but remained silent………Still. 

Upon entering the kitchen, my Father didn’t even need to see the letter to know; a reaction that rendered one so readily silent could mean only one thing.

“Have you opened it yet?” my Father asked me.

“The whiskey bottle is half empty, of course I opened it!”

“This is no time for jokes, Billy!”

“Sorry, I am a little drunk, and I have been sitting here for hours. I thought a joke might be appropriate.”

“Well it’s not!” my Father shouted at me, his face a striking purple, as if the fear and anger he was feeling had been mixed like red and blue paint in equal amounts to create the perfect tone; for his feeling of fear was exactly balanced by his feeling of anger. 

“Look,” I said, “I wanted to wait, it’s not like it directly affects you, is it?” My temper was rising now; helped, of course, by the whiskey.

“Not like it directly affects me! Not like it………”

“STOP IT!”

My Mother cut my Father off. After her first display of panic, she had become calm. She held the letter in her hands and turned it over and over again, trying to see what it said without breaking that red wax seal with a rocket on it.

My Father and I looked across the table at one another, eyes slightly narrowed. We let my Mother talk.

“Just stop it both of you,” she continued, reinforcing her order. “Now, we have planned for this. We have talked this through for years and years, and we all agreed that we would be ready! Now that it’s actually happened, we’re falling apart. We all know what to do! We know that, if they want you,Billy, it will be much easier……..But we need to find out first.”

My Mother handed the letter over to me.

I took it from her.

My Father pinched the bottle of whiskey from my side and gulped it down.

I broke the seal; the little, red rocket crumbled and the wax fell onto the kitchen table like little autumn leaves leaving a maple on the wind. It cracked open and sounded like a fresh bar of chocolate snapping. 

I read the letter, not out loud, but to myself. I did not need to tell my Mother and Father how the letter went, or how they described what needed to be done; everyone knew the procedure; all I needed to tell them was the name of who was required. 

I put the letter down.

“Well?” my Father demanded of me.

“Going good so far,” I answered back. “Yes, it’s me they want. They want me!”

My Father screamed his approval and celebrated with more whiskey. My Mother looked relieved.

“Thank God they didn’t want your little Brother, or your little Sister!”

My father repeated that a few times, and drank a shot from the bottle when his lips were free from moving.

“Well we know the plan.” My Mother was still calm, and the good news that they wanted me, made her calmer still. “It will be much easier with it being you, you know that, Billy. Hiding for a very long time will be hard! Maybe after a few years, if no investigations are made and everyone forgets, you may be able to come down. But it’s better than getting thrown away to the moon. Right, we need to begin!”

My Mother was right; it was going to be hard to pull off, but it was better than being sent to the moon to be dumped and left; anything was better than that. We just had to get away with it.

“When do they want you for?”

“Two weeks tomorrow,” I replied.

“Let’s waste no time, we need to get to the city and find one.”

“I will tell your Brother and Sister, Billy, they know the plan too, but it will upset them. You will be able to say bye to them properly before you go,” my Father said to me.

My mother turned to him and asked:

“It’s ready isn’t it, Dave, the cabin?”

“Yes, there are enough supplies to live in the mountains for a year. After that, we will have to find a way of getting supplies there. But that can wait, we need to get him there first, and pull this whole thing off.”

My Father was right, and we needed to get going.

It was then that me and my Mother got in the car and drove to the city; to the dirtiest, poorest part.

We found one that was willing after only half an hour of searching. Most of them were passed out, or sleeping, or in a daze.

I looked on from the car window, so I couldn’t be seen, and when we came to one of them that was slumped on the side of the road begging, my Mother got out and propositioned him. The first guy we came across that resembled me enough, was my height and about my age, give or take a few years, told my Mother to give him some money or do one. When we got to the second guy that was fit enough, my Mother persuaded him that she needed someone to help around the house and build an outhouse in the garden. She told him she would feed him, and that he would have his own room, with his own things. She placed a crisp note in his hand and arranged to pick him up in a week. We drove home with the first part of the plan underway. 

My Brother and Sister had both been told by my Father when me and my Mother were out picking a homeless man. When I came through the front door, I saw them in the hallway crying, tears fresh on their cheeks. I hugged them then and told them that everything was going to be ok, and that they knew the plan, and that they knew that one day, they might be able to see me again.

We lived the last week as if in a house made of glass; we contained our happiness inside the transparent walls, but we could never truly believe it for long enough, for we could always see outside the windows wherever we went within it, and we all knew how easy, an inevitable, glass could, and would, break. We lived on a whisper, on a wind we knew would fade, and it soon came for me to leave my home, and go into hiding in the mountains.

On the last night before we left, I had a drink with my Father. 

“It’s all arranged, Billy. I have spread word that I am on a business trip, and everyone believes me of course, I go on many a year. All we have to do is sneak you into the car. No one can see you leaving the house, just in case they are watching.”

“I know. I am ready for the morning.”

My Brother and Sister, by this time in the night, had already gone to bed. I had hugged them goodbye for what could have be forever, and after my drink, my Father nodded at me and went up to bed himself. My Mother followed after hugging me goodbye. She looked at me and said:

“It’s the only way. Goodnight, Billy.”

“Goodnight, Mother,” I replied.

My father drove me for days and days; we crossed rivers and seas, and he dropped me at the foot of a big mountain and gave me a map. The cabin was easy to find; it was the only thing on the whole mountain. We hugged, and he repeated what my Mother had said to me the night before we left. He drove off, and I hiked up to the mountain and found my new home. It was all set up with food and fuel for a year, and I got cosy, and I waited.

At the foot of the mountain was a road; the road me and my Father had come in on. Twenty miles down that road was a little settlement. I went there once a month. No one looked at me like I was a wanted man and so I assumed the plan had worked, but I was not certain until I went into town and picked up a letter that had come addressed to the new name I went by: William. 

The letter was from my Mother. It read:

Dear William,

It worked! It really worked!

I put the letter in your bed side table, next to the bed the homeless man (who said his name was Mark, he was really nice actually, a really good worker) was sleeping.

During the week before they were meant to take you, he worked every day and even got halfway through building an outhouse in the garden. He was clean and well mannered, and he thanked me for the food and the bed, and for the chance to make his life better.

But anyway, back to the plan. 

They came at midnight, the day after you were meant to be taken to the moon. They raided the house and went into your bedroom. They tore the place to bits and found the letter. They took you (Mark) kicking and screaming out of the house. They didn’t ask any questions. They didn’t want proof that it was actually you. They just wanted what they were owed, and they didn’t care about anything else. It worked William, it worked. It’s been two months, as I write this, and there has been no news, no investigation.

No one cared about Mark, he was a homeless man and no one will remember that he has gone, but we will always remember you….always.

Your Brother and Sister are fine, and your Father is happy. 

I will try and write as often as I can.

Yours, Mother.

I put the letter down. I was happy that everything had gone to plan, and that my family was safe, and also, that I hadn’t been put into a rocket and sent to the moon. I had a nice cabin with a fire, and I threw the letter into it to destroy any evidence of the plan, and any memory of Mark.

I sat down in my chair by the glowing fire, and I felt a little more at ease; a little less fear. The news had made all of this worth it, and although I did miss my old home, I snuggled down and got comfy in my new home; my home less known.

There was a knock at the door, but before I could get up from my chair in front of the fire, the door was smashed open. They stood in the doorway, and with them, pointing at me through the dark night, was Mark, the homeless man. How could we have known that it would come to this?

They swapped us over, and Mark sat down in the chair by the fire to claim the cabin, and sleep in his new home, with a new name: William.

They took me back down the mountain, to take me to the rocket that would fire me to the moon, where I would wander and wonder, and wonder about wandering, with no place to go; with no place to stay; and with no place, to simply be.