First you stop living. Then you start dying. Then you start crying. But to keep it all going you must always be lying. It's like having money stop coming in, living off your lifetime's savings. Seems the same to the outside world but an internal clock starts ticking down to That Day when life comes crashing down. Whatever you do, don't tell anyone of this horrible condition. Most of all you've got to keep it from the kids.
"I am nothing. I can have nothing. There's nothing I can do."
Big Man Daddy hears this every day in his mind's life. He wants to scream for help, to be held by understanding arms, to come in from the cold withering wind. But that's not what a real man does. He stands tall in the face of adversity - even if it's of his own making (especially if it's of his own making). Here in the frontier of what would one day be called the Old West, hard men were required to tame the land. Anything less and you were coward of the county, an unperson.
Big Man Daddy's tears expanded with the years. His wife died, leaving him to raise his two sons. A terrified and cowering soul on the inside, the hissing "nothing" voice convinced him he wasn't up to the task and never could be. His sons must accept him as he is: the image of a strong man lacking truth. But his sons were hurting too. They wanted to scream for help, to be held by understanding arms, to come in from the cold withering wind. But a good father shows no mercy.
And thus the dying cycle continued. The oldest son - the favored child - drowning in feelings of perpetual inadequacy driven straight from the heart of his old man had committed suicide. Publicly, Big Man Daddy mourned him - while whispering of weakness. In truthfulness his nights were dominated by guilt monsters reviling him, mercilessly driving him further into his nihilistic mindset."But I'm standing tall against the wind. I'm still alive. That proves I'm right. Demons go away!" This everything the demons wished to hear.
His younger more sensitive son remained, only he dare not lash him as he had his brother. If only the boy had survived the whip! Big Man Daddy needed his sons to be as he is more than he needed life itself. He had to gamble - gamble his son would love him even without the insecure whippings. But this sensitive son more than anything else cherished his father's strong man image, praying the lie of his older brother's weakness to be true. I must believe in my Daddy. To think otherwise far too miserable a thought.
At 19, the boy was considered a man in the Old West. Ready or not, time to buck up on the rodeo of life. He felt ill-equipped to face the world having never received the nurturing he required. But he would be strong like his father, carrying on the proud family tradition. When he drank in the saloon, all the men bragged on how strong they were and if he were to lose that image of strength he'd be drummed out of town. By such thin threads did the boy's life hang.
Big Man Daddy's spiritual back was broken. Just a matter of time before he stumbled and fell for all the world to see he could not get back up. This daily fear racked and ravaged him as he fought back with whiskey and black outs. "You've got to learn to drink to be a man, son." But like all of us, his son had rather learn to live.Finally, That Day came. Big Man Daddy was part of a committee to run the Sheriff out of town. The Sheriff was a fair but gnarly old cuss who didn't hesitate to use his gun. He was not just the image of a hard man, he was one. But times were changing and where the town once needed hard men in the beginning it needed the money men now, men who were political and calculating in nature. Naturally, these kind of men were afraid of the last hard man in the form of their Sheriff.
Banding together, they confronted the Sheriff, telling him he had to resign by force of a paper they had drafted. But the Sheriff merely scowled, tearing the hapless paper in two. This act of defiance - an act Big Man Daddy had needed to commit for decades - ripped right through his soul. Flashing through his mind was the picture of his own son standing defiant against his own lie, revealing Big Man Daddy for the fraud he is. That was UNACCEPTABLE. He must stand up to the Sheriff.
"What do you mean you won't resign? There's talk around town about you! Talk about you sleeping in the beds of the wives of the men you killed. What sort of freak show are you?"
Next thing Big Man Daddy knew he was lying on the ground with a sore jaw and stars spinning around his head. His head clearing, he put his hand on his gun as the Sheriff readied to mount his horse. Noticing this, the Sheriff looked back and sneered. "Go ahead, Big Man Daddy. My back is to you, just the position you like." Then he rode off in contempt, Big Man Daddy frozen in fear.
Don't fuck with me!
Later, mad denial rushed through Big Man Daddy's brain like a runaway river. "No, it didn't really happen! No one thinks you're a coward! Your image is still alive! No one knows you're broken! You can keep on just as you've always done!" Yet, any part of him still connected to reality found no respite in the present facts of his life. The slowly dripping dream-into-nightmare of his life raged in full fury as a broken dam of long hidden love. Then sentence was pronounced for his crime.
"I'm moving out, Pa. How could you let him do it? How could you let him hit you like that? You just did nothin'! Couldn't even get off the ground."
Having lost one son Big Man Daddy could not afford to lose another. He was in a literal life and death struggle. Knowing the true state of his crippledom, life would be unbearable alone. It was already unbearable even with his son! First, he tried one last grasping try for the lie.
"It'll be OK, son. It's not like you think. I...I slipped and fell. You see..."
He was failing miserably, unable to convince even himself.
"I just can't face 'em, Pa. I just can't. Whole saloon - whole town'll be laughin' at me." The son's eyes stayed averted to the floor, unable to look upon the freak show standing before him. Like his father's previous flash of horror, he just couldn't get it out of his head how the men at the saloon would mercilessly mock him, branding him a loser by association. Of all possible things in the world, that is the Last Thing he could accept in his formative larva stage.
Fully panicked now, realizing he'd lose his son forever, Big Man Daddy's mind resolved into pure insanity, thrusting himself full bore into his lifelong hard image determined to let nothing stand in his way. Today, the image would become reality and the world would be saved.
"I promise you, son, you won't ever have to be ashamed of your Daddy again. I give you my word on that."
That's when Big Man Daddy grabbed his rifle, walked out the door and went hunting for the Sheriff. But not in a direct way.
Big Man Daddy had to win, but facing a true hard man he had no chance. He needed an edge - even if a coward's edge. All that mattered in the end was a dead badge. So he perched himself behind the curtain of a second story window right on main street where the Sheriff was sure to walk. Big Man Daddy would cut him down with the voices of a thousand delighted demons screaming in his ears. At least somebody approved of him!
But he'd been spotted carrying his rifle with a stern and twisted look, word spreading like an arson fire. The Sheriff put down his drink, shaking his head at the drastic measures men took to save face. He'd bring Big Man Daddy back down to earth, removing the melodramatics from his mind to let clear thinking back in. He sauntered in deliberation fashion right into the middle of the street until finally he saw the rifle poking out of the window. He also saw the eyes behind the rifle - and those eyes his.
The Sheriff's stance was unwavering, forcing Big Man Daddy to ask himself: "Do you really want to do this? Is this really the answer?" Excited demons exhorted him to shoot, insisting that was the path back to life and love. "Do it! DO it! Be a man at last!" But those cold grey eyes of the Sheriff held him in a trance until finally Big Man Daddy's nerve left him as the cold water of truth spilled over. Killing the Sheriff would solve nothing. Still, the demons must be somehow appeased.
In his deliberate walk, the Sheriff made his way up the stairs, knocking on the closed door of his would-be shooter. The Sheriff knew already that to be a true hard man you had to be able to cry. In his mind, Big Man Daddy was learning this lesson and life would go on. Reason will win the day just as it had done for him. All in all, this entire incident a blessing.But what the Sheriff saw as the Beginning, Big Man Daddy saw as the End. The demons relentlessly insisting he'd be never be any kind of man without pulling that trigger, Big Man Daddy's nerve failed once more, aiming the rifle into a fatal position of self-inflicted wounding. Did he have the guts to face life on life's terms? The worm inside still hissed its initial prophesy that began the downslide of his life: "I am nothing. I can have nothing. There's nothing I can do."
The shot exploded in the room into, both honest and lying hearts hearing it. Big Man Daddy's fellow cowards shivered in fear of a shared fate, whispering words of "weakness" about him. Honest hearts lamented the waste of a soul sitting on the verge of a great truth.
Like all wars, it had been a war for love. Some running to it, most running from it. To lose the war is to sit outside of love in a forever wasteland, haunted by those lost to you. These Wasteland Men make up their own false rules of life claiming death to be true life, fighting amongst each other in futile defiance, vowing never to capitulate wearing imagined crowns of glory. But the battle for love can never be won. The only solution is surrender.
No comments:
Post a Comment