[D7] The Reaping

It’s hardly the crack of dawn’s ass when my dad kicks me out of the house, screaming swears into the frosty air and his knuckles still swelling after kissing my cheek. We fought through the night until our yells sounded like silence, and the silence sounded like war drums. Or, maybe an alarm. Or a warning. There’s a storm coming, it seemed to say, while we heaved heavy breaths and tried to unclench our fists and looked anywhere but at each other. And it’s heading your way. These types of storms are commonplace in my household, where there are more days when I’m not home than days when I am. When the days that I am home only remind me of how much I’ve lost, of how little I still have to lose.

So, it’s fine by me when the bastard kicks me out. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. Just another tick to add to the table of times he regrets ever having me, which is fine by me, because I have regrets, too. At least we have that in common.

Mr. Holloway gave me a key to his place when this started happening way too often and he got tired of waking up at 5 A.M. to let my red-faced ass in. “Try to use it sparingly,” he told me knowingly, but sparingly my ass. This is the third time I’ve let myself into his house in the past four days and, if I know anything about my dad, it’s that, at this point, he won’t let me go back home until at least the end of the month.

So, naturally, I crash here. This odd relationship I’ve forged with my 70-something-year-old art patron was never part of the deal, but Holloway’s seen me at my worst and still thinks I’m worth the big bucks he sells my paintings for to his clients. I’ve got half the decency to feel guilty about it, but my hands are trembling with the aching urge to either create or destroy something and I haven’t decided which one I’m gonna go through with, yet. A mirror immediately greets me in the front hall, and I see dark purples and light yellows and faded blues, all colliding against each other like some kinda dying galaxy on my right cheek. Something inside of me swells at the sight, as if still tensing up from the oncoming fist connected to my dad’s outstretched arm. I slam the front door shut, rattling the frame and the overall foundation of the household, and decide that I’m going through with the latter.

I’m snapping paint brushes in my room by the time Mr. Holloway comes down five minutes later, looking tired and worn and old. “I’m paying for those, you know,” he says, and I roll my eyes but drop them altogether, anyway, because he’s right and I’ve probably already wasted enough of his money as is. “What’s happened, now?”

“What always happens,” I say. “He’s a prick. That’s all there is to it.”

Holloway sighs, and that’s when I know I’m in for it. I resist the urge to cover my ears like a five-year-old boy who doesn’t want to hear that it’s time for him to go to bed because 1.) I am not a five-year-old boy and 2.) I figure it’d probably be a little rude to do that after bursting through his front door before the sunlight even came through his bedroom window. “Basil,” he says. “Sons shouldn’t hate their fathers.”

It’s times like these that I miss Roland more than ever. Roland, who hated my father probably more than I did, wouldn’t be patting me on the back right now while opening his mouth to tell me sweet-nothings. Roland had it just as bad as me. He understood pain (probably a lot more than was good for him, if the rope he tied around his neck was any indication) and didn’t bother to search for the silver linings in every black cloud. He understood that there’s not always a silver lining, that black clouds are sometimes just black clouds; that when it rains it doesn’t just pour, it floods; that the dark doesn’t always give way to the light. Being raised in the gutter, you don’t have much of a choice but to understand that.

Holloway doesn’t get that. He thinks that pain leads to art and art leads to peace and peace leads to some kinda utopic crap where no one hates anyone and everyone loves someone. He thinks the only good artists are the ones who’ve had Pain suckerpunch them in the gut and still fought through it, but when I mention Roland - who was a better artist and an even better person than I ever could be - he tells me all the best artists die young. It’s one of those sayings of his that make me wince, like touching a wound that still hasn’t healed.

“And fathers shouldn’t hate their sons,” I reply, looking hard at him. “Doesn’t it work both ways?”

“Of course it does, but, you can’t live your whole life like this. Give him another chance -”

“I’m done with second chances, Holloway. Done!” I erupt, but Mr. Holloway’s expression is unflinching and unashamed. If anything, his eyes just get softer, and that just pisses me off even more. “Even if there were second chances in life, he sure as hell isn’t the one who deserves it.” Life doesn’t give you second chances, because if it did, I wouldn’t be here, and Roland wouldn’t be dead. Holloway think it’s so damn easy to forgive and forget, but does he know how many times I’ve bargained with the Universe to give me my best friend back? Does he know how many times I’ve begged the Universe to at least allow me to forgive him if I couldn’t have him back? Does he know how much it still hurts? Does he know when the hurting ends? I look for answers in Holloway’s eyes, still searching for the same thing I’ve been searching for ever since they buried Roland, but I come up empty-handed.

“It doesn’t matter if he deserves it or not. What matters is what you deserve,” he says without hesitating. “And you deserve a helluva lot better than scrapping fights with your dad everyday, and crawling all the way over here afterwards just to lick your wounds. What kind of life is that, Basil?”

I laugh, a short staccato sound that mingles uneasily in the air with the particles of the words Holloway just said. I don’t look at him, because looking at him means accepting the fact that he’s right. And, a part of me knows that he is, but the rest of me just isn’t ready to stomach that.

“It’s my life, Mr. Holloway.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

He makes me get up and have breakfast in the kitchen, and doesn’t force me to talk about it anymore, which I’m grateful for. Holloway can really push my buttons, but in a good way - in a way that forces me to remember the heartbeat that’s still kicking underneath all of the dust and dirt and grime I’ve piled over it. I guess he’s good at doing that because he’s been doing it for himself for his whole life. He’s got a dead wife, no kids, and a whiny depressed teen that always overstays his welcome. I wonder how he does it, sometimes. I wonder if he ever allows himself to act as tired as he feels. But, then he starts telling me some story about a client who paid nearly a thousand bucks for some grape juice squeezed over a white canvas, and I allow myself to forget about everything else, even if only for a little while. We have coffee and stale bread until the Sun tumbles into the room, like an old friend, and I’m reminded of how it always shines brightest after a storm.

After breakfast, I start to head back to my room, to clean up the splintered mess I made and maybe finish up on a painting I started last week, but Holloway stops me. “No time,” he says. “It’s a big day for you.” “All the more reason to get back at it, though, right?” A smile is tilting my lips. “Who knows if I’ll ever get to hold a brush again?” I laugh when he frowns and tells me not to kid about stuff like that again.

He walks me to the door. I’m a disheveled, broken mess, but talks with Mr. Holloway always make me feel like I’m capable of putting my parts back together again. We face each other, me on his front step, him behind the threshold, and I feel like I should thank him or shake his hand or something because I know I owe it to him. I owe a lot to this guy. Instead, though, the words get clogged in my throat and I end up just looking at him - at his sunken eyes, at his head of white hair, at the lines that a long life of laughing and crying and living have carved into his skin - and I see the person I want to be sixty years from now.

In typical Holloway fashion, he smiles something crooked at me and says what he always says every time we part ways: “I’ll see ya, kid.”

I smile back. “Yeah. See you, Holloway.”

When my name is called through the speakers and I find my way to the top of the stage, I see Holloway’s face in the crowd - a little shocked, a little dumbfounded - and I think that at least my paintings will be worth a little bit more, now. I see my dad, unwittingly standing a few yards away from Holloway, with eyes finally looking directly at me and with fists that’ve finally unclenched. I see my mother and my sister, who look like they’re getting ready to gear up for yet another storm heading our way.

Most of all, I see Roland, the rope around his neck still tightly fastened, the dark purples and light yellows and faded blues blooming like a supernova from his neck to his jaw to his cheeks to his eyes - and his eyes, they’re staring right at me.

Yeah, Holloway. I’ll see ya.