Rodolphus: My Father. The Killer.

Is it you, my darling, ma cherie, the manipulator, or is it him, my father, the true deceiving force, turning my reality back upon itself? My watch relates the passage of time, what is it? I do not know, only that I have been here for more than forty-eight hours, without food, without sleep, without your touch, going between your marvel of modern entertainment and my old klunker 486, slapping the keys like some antiquated hack, spilling my beans, shooting my shot, discovering the truth you would have me believe, the truth, the reality which as I just said has turned back on itself. Did I just say that at the top of the paragraph? Hell, I have been without food and sleep and you for a long time. I really do not know what I just said, or wrote, as it were, at the top of this paragraph.

You have deceived me. Should that be important, I wonder, flipping through the buttons on this remote which before a

few days ago I did not even realize existed, could exist, except maybe in those horrible sci-fi movies they do on late night, you know, that geek show for geeks with the silhouette geeks who think they are funny? I ramble. Please forgive me. As I have forgiven you. The little Nash Rambler. Bamble. I need coffee. But have I forgiven you, truly, my love, my woman, forgiven you as I have forgiven my father? My father, that mysterious web of lies. And have I forgiven my father, just because you invited me here and sneaked this wonderful gizmo into my hand, then deserted me?

I don’t know what I think, you bitch. I do not know. I do not know. All we have shared has been a lie. My father was a lie. Obviously, my mother was a lie. Do I even know, at this late date, thirty-two years old, what is real and what was constructed to make me think I am normal?

There, I touch the red button and — forgive the oodleful typographical errors — I watch over the top of my laptop as that man, the one I am to believe was called The Wolf — in some mythical organization called The Club, or you would force me to accept it as truth — and that man glides into the center of the screen, some gray room, large pistols blazing in his fists. The snarl on his face is something I never would have imagined on the face of my father.

He half turns and red fire erupts from the big holes in the pistols. I see what I perceive to be other men, thrown backward, dying, I presume, and I am given to believe this is not a movie. Not some staged performance of tasteless violence.

My father. The Killer.

I know the face. I do not know the expression. The savagery. I know the coat, a drover coat I remember my Papa calling it. Is this man, as you would insist I believe, my father?

There! His body jerks. He has been hit by a bullet. Again. His body twitches. His expression does not alter, his body accepts the torment of the projectile, my father turns and the pistols in his hands buck, men fall, and my finger touches the button and he is there, half turned, his face turned to me — the implied camera — frozen, more than half-profile, and I see the face I remember from earliest childhood — when was the last time I actually saw that face, eight years old? — and it is the twisted animal snarl of a wolf at bay, a wolf seizing and snapping the bodies of the multitude rats hanging from its pelt.

Excuse my lapse. How long have I sat here thus, unmoving, watching the screen, studying the animal-man frozen there? Sorry, I suppose you would not register my ten-minute coma, for you are somewhere else, I imagine, reading this text — did I tell you that some time this morning the telephone rang, and that I answered to silence, blackness, not even breathing? Somehow I knew that void was death. Or Death, let me capitalize that. No, Death — italics, aren’t modern word processors neato?

They will be coming. That’s what the call was about. They will be coming, those shadowy rats from The Club, that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Why I happened to meet you at the coffee house? Why someone that looks like you would speak to someone who looks like me? Someone in my profession — a priest, you bitch you bitch — I should have known a gorgeous woman like you would never seduce an ugly man like me unless it was political.

Political. God, forgive my vanity in using your Precious Name, but God! I am a stupid man. I have been vain all my life. I thought I was smart, so sharp, such a canny dude? I had all the answers, and those I didn’t have, shit, I faked.

Where are you, ma cherie? I love you. I forgive you. Did you deceive me? I don’t care. I will accept you on any terms, only love me, only hold me the way you held me my darling girl my woman my stealer of virginity I will break any vows to touch you again to cradle your breasts so tenderly to stroke the insides of your lips with my tongue I never thought lovemaking so real so sweet oh God shit there I used it in vain again and swore besides but entering you was entering my life I never lived until you opened onto me and made me enter the true plain not that spiritual place I tricked myself not them not the fathers my teachers my nice sweet nuns the all-knowers the too-sharp dudes you know I lived on the street real canny that’s me I could throw a punch with the toughest oh wow just noticed. Where have I been? Just glanced back.

Punctuation. Shit. I am usually very good about punctuation.

Fuck it.

My finger, one on my left hand, one not so blistered, toggles and your miraculous monitor scans ahead to the place my father drops. He falls. Like a sack of shit, my old man. Again, what is it, the hundredth time. More like the hundredth and first time, more like it, more more more how do you like it. I digress. I am strange and tired oh so tired. Got to watch that punctuation. Sentence structure. I ramble. My head is packed full of manure, a much nicer word than shit. Hell. Shit sums it up. My head is packed full of shit that reeks that stinks that emanates from my nostrils like smoke rings. Which brings up another thing. I’m smoking again. I suppose that’s why you left that stack of cigars in the kitchen?

Toggling between the sci-fi remote and my laptop I really can’t say when I’m actually conversing with you here in text as you sit somewhere else far away reading my words somewhere in time and when I’m babbling thinking I’m recording my thoughts but not really because I’m over or over here as it were my key board covered with cigar ash.

What is vivid in my memory is the TV — all that crap on the news, years ago, when I was what, ten years old, or eleven? That fat general in his battle fatigues talking about blowing away the terrorist, The Wolf, saving the country and all Hail to the King. The police guy, some really fat sucker with a cigarette crazy-glued to his pink fat lip, he told me it was my father they were talking about, that fat general, in his battle fatigues looking dashing and fat under the TV lights.

My father. I remember his big hands. Big hands like a bear. They were warm. I always thought they must be kind of magical, you know? The way the heat came out of his hands and zoomed into my shoulder as he patted me. He used to pick me up and squeeze me, a real long squeeze, until the blood must have stopped flowing to my brain. And he would kiss me then, just before I blacked-out, a big sloppy kiss that grosses any kid out only I never minded. the kiss usually landed on my eye, or smashed my nose to the side, or his great big huge mouth covered my whole mouth and my chin and part of my neck.

Did you know that I detest politics? I know that is not my public image. How the hell did a sucker priest get a public image, is what I want to know. But we never had much time to talk about me, about you, we were just so busy touching, and tasting, and kissing — but I detest politics, the political machine, Republicans, especially Democrats. But anyone with a political slogan in their mealy mouth is no friend of mine. Well, actually, most of my friends have political mealy mouths, but hey, love is supposed to be unconditional, right?

What are you anyway, my love, ma cherie, my stealer of peace of mind? Are you a secret agent? Is there a telephone in your shoe? Be careful answering, you could do some serious damage with that spike heel. Did I ever tell you I thought you were a hooker, that first day, when you oozed between the tables and nearly spilled cappuccino on my nice pressed collar, well, my dickey anyway, but it would have been okay, fine and dandy-doo, buddy-roo, because it was my plastic dickey, cheating all the way that’s me but I never could manage an iron, as you have remarked when you snooped through my closet. A hooker. And I got hard. Immediately. Did I fit some Club profile? Attracted to the trampy. Raised by nuns. Could you see the tent which sprouted and nearly knocked over the table?

If you molded yourself to fit my profile, or if they chose you to fit my needs, they get an A+, no shit, you were right for my eyes for my heart for my soul the second I saw you I said “she is right” I really said that and I’m getting an erection just screwing up this punctuation again.

I just watched it again. The moment my Papa drops. There is smoke everywhere. All the episodes of Gunsmoke concentrated in that little gray room. Flashes of fire as presumably the bastards aerate my dear old dad.

Surprise! He gets up! He flashes up, more correctly versed. I love you, I don’t mind saying, probably because I never said it when we were lovemaking. Screwing. Fornicating. Fucking. No we never fucked, not us, even though I could do you right now tenting here at my laptop, the rhythm of my fingers creating a syncopation a vibration if you will and here goes the punctuation but if you were here excuse me — I’m back. The punctuation should be better. I am relieved (I blush). If you were here. Or, if two minutes ago, that is, you were here. What I would have done for you. With the frozen image of my father, the killer, on the screen in high-definition glory.

I toggle the button. The button. And my father the killer goes down again. Actually, thrown down. Dashed down. Body slammed.

The strength in him. I thought I was strong. All these years, I thought I was the toughest. But there. There is tough. How many holes must he have sustained. The blood squirting like in those terrible terrible cartoons, shot full of holes, let’s have a drink of sparking yuppie water, you know the routine. The strength in him. I thought I was strong, I did, but I am not, for I weep, I cry even now, at this moment, this moment locked in time which you read somewhere far away at a later date. The tears leak, they cascade my face is wet, who would have thought the old man to have so much salt in him?

Are they coming, I wonder, briefly. I don’t care. But do I? Shouldn’t I care, shouldn’t I fear? I have been indoctrinated. Fear. Caring. That might have summed me up, two days ago, three days ago? I have lost track. I cannot read my watch. It must be busted. The numbers are smeared. Why am I crying like a child, blubbering actually, rocking back and forth in front of your super-fucking-special-TV-set-of the future, my old Compaq 486 laptop soaking in my lap.

My father, my father, they have killed my father. And it was all lies, what they said, on the TV all those years ago. About him screaming, about him wailing and blubbering as only I seem capable of doing! They said he screamed, screamed like a woman, like a harpy, like a carpy — that’s a fish, isn’t it?

I used to have nightmares about my father. Played like a movie. Night terrors, I would scream, I would wake to my soppy sheets, shit! I pissed the bed again and I am fourteen years old and they think they all do that I am such a sissy that’s what they say and I kick the ever-loving shit out of them each time they do. My night terrors were like a movie.

My father, his hands over his head, bawling, screaming: “I surrender! I give up! Don’t shoot me please don’t shoot me oh God I don’t wanna die don’t shoot me!” Screaming. That’s the focus of my nightmare. My father, screaming. Hell, I didn’t care, I loved him, I didn’t care if he killed people. He was Papa, to me, was and always will be, the guy with the big bear hands, the magical hands that shot me full of life and love. My father is screaming, tears on his rictus face, and then he pulls out that famous gun and shoots that cop. My father, the killer.

Is it okay to love a killer. Therapy, I tried it. It’s okay to hate your father, that’s what they preached. But they never told me, if it is okay, you know, to love your father. I was too scared to ask.

I need a sign. I have watched the CD I don’t know how many times. I have wept. I have guzzled your ritzy coffee. I have smoked every one of those hundred cigars. I have not partaken of the flesh, nor the wine. I hate to admit this, but sometime, I think yesterday, I caught myself lapping water from your toilet. Bad dog! No food. No pool, no pets, I ain’t got no cigarettes. But no matter how many times I watch your high-faluting TV, I can’t figure out what I am supposed to do with the information. We were a sham, I got that part. My old man wasn’t a coward, I’ve figured that far (duh, no dummies here). But now what. I need a sign. God. Ma cherie! Papa!

I do thank you for giving me back my father. That is most important to me. I had stopped admitting that I even had a father. Mr. Orphan, that’s what I’d tell everyone. Even you. Embarrassing, that’s what it is. The CD shows the guy had guts, wasn’t a fraidy cat. And, I guess, although there are no subtitles to all the gory action, that those two people, one that looks like a kid, and the other that looks like a girl or a woman or to be politically correct a female — those must be the hostages in the long ago headlines. The ones my dear old pop was supposed to have offed. And now I know. I’ve watched, so many times, Papa hustling them along, covering them with his big body, and taking, taking, taking those bullets. And it’s obvious they were killed by all the other fire. Thank you for giving him back.

Fantasy. Fiction. What were those cameras doing there? There must have been at least five, maybe six, for all them angles. Am I supposed to guess? I need a sign. Preferably a great big flashing neon sign.

God in heaven, my Father, what about the sins of the father? Is that why I am at heart a violent person? How many deacons have I desired to drop, with one of these fists? Kissing rings, how I would have loved to shove some of them rings up some of them holy asses. Did I ever stand a chance? Has any choice been right? Well, regardless, no more starched white dickeys for me, plastic or cotton.

The phone is ringing. I sit here listening to it. Seven. There goes eight. Should I pick up? Twelve. It’s them, isn’t it? Where are you, my love? I don’t want to go out, both pistols flaring, snarling a savage rictus grin. Bang, bang! Ooh, ya got me! I’m dyin’, ooh, I’m dyin’ — I’m not afraid, I really do not think I am that, afraid. But I am afraid of never touching you again. That must be twenty. Just pick it up. I’m afraid of never smoothing my hand down the curve of your back, palming your sweaty silken waist. Squeezing your ass. Sheesh, what a way for me to talk! Hell, why not. I’m just a regular guy, nowadays, even though my father, a claimed blackhearted bastard, traitor to the glorious U.S.A. (and fucking coward on top of that) is dead all these years, unsung, probably noisy as hell in his grave — and the only woman I’ve ever touched is a figment of my imagination, no more than a plant by something called, of all things, The Club. I wonder if they’re the people who put out that gizmo to protect cars?

I’m getting weird in my insomnia, in my starvation, and the telephone just keeps on a-ringin’ — the tiny thought has passed through the hallways of my head: what if it’s you? Calling me? To hear my voice? Is that a silly fantasy?

Hello? That’s what I said, about a minute ago. And, of course, silence. That void, again. I have a feeling, a bad one, that things are coming, so to speak, to a head. They are coming, probably even now, and I have to think, to think, where can I hide this disk, so that you will know? So that you will know how I feel about you, ma cherie? So that you will know that in our three weeks of the only happiness I’ve felt in my life, that I love you, more than anything else breezing through my world! I could be happy, even now, even with the tears wet on my face, if only I could kiss you one more time.

You bitch! How could you do this to me? Trick me? Make me a fool. Oh please make me a fool again, again, that is what I pray for, not for world peace, not for the end of Democrats and Republicans and greed — I pray a selfish prayer for one last wet kiss from your perfect lips.

The doorbell. Uh-oh. Even though I expected it — have been waiting for it for all the time in the world — I am not ready. Wimp that I am, I desire to live. I want to tell people the truth about my father. As I go to meet my executioner, or torture, or hell on Earth, my mouth is dry. Probably more the hundred cigars I smoked, the gallons of your special coffee, the lack of food, the lack of peace for the whole of my life. I’ll put the disk — oh, I don’t know where. But, P.S., I love you, ma cherie, whatever your name is, my Jenny, always my Jenny.

m m m

The man opens the door. He readies himself to throw himself to the ground. Roll on the carpet. Or throw the biggest punch of his life. Or, more realistically, to offer his throat sheeplike to the butcher on the other side of the door.

The man on the other side of the door is big, at least as big as the man opening the door. They blink, for a moment, their eyes no more than two feet apart.

And then the younger man, the one opening the door, throws himself into the older man’s arms.

m m m

That’s how I got my Papa back. I trembled. I wept. I hugged him harder than he ever hugged me.

“It’s really you,” I breathed into his neck.

“It’s me, Christopher, my sweet boy,” he said, and yes, he still was able to squeeze me harder than I squeezed him. “We have to leave here, son. Now.”

“Okay. I’ve got to get my computer. I hid it in the freezer.”

“Now there’s an original place to put your computer. Hurry up. Now, Jennifer said my shipment of cigars was here in the kitchen...”

Oops.

“Um, Papa. I smoked those.”

He blinked at me, the freezer door between us.

“You smoked one hundred Cuban Presidente cigars? Sheesh, talk about a priest with expensive tastes.”

As we left your apartment he told me not to go too hard on you, ma cherie. Your name is really Jenny. He told me you were very worried about me. That any trick wasn’t your fault. And the only profile you fit was Papa’s idea of what was worthy of his son.

“But I saw you die.” We walked arm-in-arm and I could not stop looking at him. He looked older, certainly — what must he be? Fifty-five, -six? — but he looked exactly as I remembered him, with a touch more gray in his still-thick hair.

“Long story, Christopher. In a nutshell: good, quick surgery, and advanced, for its day, body armor. That was a drover coat for droving electric sheep.”

“And do robots dream of electric sheep?”

“Nice.”

He paused and took my hand, moved it inside his suit coat, inside his shirt. I felt the deep puckering pits. Big bullets had passed that way long ago.

“I’m sorry for leaving you, Christopher. Needless to say, I wasn’t given a choice. In many ways it was my fault. I was an arrogant fellow, way back then. I broke rules, and usually I got great results. The CD you watched was the first and last case where my rule-breaking cost innocent lives. So naturally the top brass chose me as their favorite fall guy. Instead of the rescuer flubbing the play against overwhelming odds, I became the actual leader of the terrorists. An agent gone way, way bad.”

“I could have killed somebody for the way it used to make me feel, the way they talked about you.”

He grinned as we resumed our walk. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“No choice, Mr. Angry Young Priest. You pissed off a lot of the wrong people, with your anti-government rhetoric. Specially since it wasn’t such a secret whose son you were.”

“The Club was going to get me, shut me up?”

“The KLB does pretty much whatever it thinks is going to get the job done. And I had a pretty big following back in my day. There are a lot of people around in the biz who wouldn’t mind clearing my name. And you could have ended up being the perfect rally banner, with all your politics —”

“— I hate politics —”

“I hated all the things I was involved with, but I was still involved. The same with you, sonny-boy.”

“I don’t understand why you never came to see me...”

“I’ve been there, Chris. The whole game. But you couldn’t know. You’ve always been a target, and if the KLB knew I was alive you’d’ve been a target with a big hole in it.”

I patted his arm. “It must have been pretty tough on you, Papa.”

He grinned. “We’re tough guys, aren’t we?”

I laughed.

His smile vanished. I felt him tense.

“This is the hard part, son. You’re just out for a walk with an old pal. Better let go of my arm. Just look around, naturally. See the leaves? Beautiful. I’ve always loved this time of year.”

I felt faint. Maybe it was the starvation diet I’d practiced the last two days. More probably it was the car with the blackened windows idling at the curb no more than one hundred feet away from us, which we were walking toward.

“I’ve always loved Winter, the best. I love snow.”

“I remember.”

And if the bullets had hit us, at that moment, I think I would not have minded too much. Because I felt peace. I wanted to hug him, my father, the killer, even if it angered the bullet bees, provoked them into their eternalizing stings.

The bullets didn’t hit us, of course. Because the car idling at the corner was our destination. I noticed it was a Bentley, big, black, brand new, with the back windows tinted opaque.

“Sir,” my Papa said, suppressing his grin, bowing slightly, as he grandly opened the rear door for me.

I listened to the door chime before entering. The James Bond theme.

“That’s actually very funny,” I said.

“So laugh. That’s better. Was afraid you’d lost your sense of humor. You know, all that priestly stuff. Programmed it for you this morning,” Papa told me. “Now get in the car, Waldo.”

“Don’t call me Waldo,” I laughed. “And I’m grown up now, so you can call me Chris, or Christopher if you prefer.”

“Just get in the car, Junior. We’ve got places to go.”

m m m

You were in the back seat, waiting for me.

m m m

You are sleeping, snoring slightly, and it is more beautiful a music than anything Chopin ever played. The only light in the room is the LED glow of my laptop. We made love tonight and it surpassed all the wishes in my life.

When I sat next to you last year, in the back of the Bentley, I couldn’t for the life of me think of a thing to say to you. And you, of course, could not even meet my eyes. Papa, in his chauffeur’s cap, hit that bump in the road (on purpose, I’m certain), and our legs brushed. I swallowed and gingerly took your hand.

Your hand was trembling, as violently as mine. My hand was trembling from exhaustion, though, and starvation, and all the many revelations of the last two days. I’m not sure what your excuse was, except maybe that the feelings in my heart mirrored in your own.

I hope. Because I do love you, ma cherie. And I will go anywhere with you, wherever your loony band of displaced geniuses go, on whatever nutty, dangerous adventure you throw your lives. This organization, the World Order Law Fellowship, or WOLF, as Papa calls it, might be a means of dueling the mindless greed, the idiotic politics, and it might be something I fit right into — although that is something I’ll have to ponder for a while.

You have not read this mini-journal, and I don’t know when you shall. And I have been unable to say those words to you, those words which consume my entire being, even when you say the magical phrase to me. Perhaps the purpose of this journal is to say the things I cannot spew verbally. And now I’ll save this file and store the disk, and then I shall return to bed and listen to you breathe, gently stroke your hair in the darkness, and if I cannot help myself, perhaps I shall wake you, gently, softly, and in my new, inexperienced way, thank you....