Sons of Ben 6, Part 1
I remember very clearly when my mother told me I was not adopted. The year was 1985. I was fifteen. I was standing in our yellow-green kitchen near the yellow refrigerator, staring at a painting of peaches and pears cradled in a wooden green bowl. "I am your mother," she said, plucking absently at her heroic perm. "Biological, and for real. Your father is not your father, but I am your mother."
I suppose I should have known that she was my real mother. We shared a resolute nose and wide-set eyes that, if they were any closer to our ears, would have rendered us unattractive, if not freakish.
What I don't know, even now, is the purpose of the deception in the first place. When confronted, she'd deflect the question or else proclaim that she "had her reasons." Presumably she had her reasons too for finally revealing the truth, and at that particular time in my (or her) life. I don't know if she thought through what the effect might have been. I hadn't quite reached the age where I was determined to find my real parents, and hadn't shown much interest. I was a quiet boy, liked trying to invent things, liked chasing animals around or proclaiming myself King of The Woods in a crown of construction paper, wielding a storm-tossed branch as some kind of vague weapon. But now I wanted to know about my real father. And there was no information forthcoming.
My mother, I knew, had played folk guitar. She was an idealist, and one of those quasi-hippies always hopping from cause to creed to church in lengthening cycles. I knew she'd sailed through minor cults and major communes, but never become tethered to any. Perhaps she'd met the man in one of these places. I was determined to find out, somehow.
The night she told me, I dreamed vividly. I was lost, driving down a lonesome backwoods road in the dark of night, when through the trees I saw an orange glow. Cresting a hill, I saw that below me lay a massive city, not previously suggested by any signs or geography...just there, massive, in the leafy midst of the New England hinterlands.
In a blink, I was driving on a deserted highway amidst tall black buildings with windows glowing red and shadows dancing somewhere within. Alongside the elevated highway raged and roiled a black river, bisected by ornate, spired bridges that passed somewhere below the road on which I drove. Looming above the arches and the terraces, a large skyscraper seemed to rise before me, tattooed with an enormous, neon red inverted cross. Below the cross sprawled unreadable letters that looked vaguely Arabic.
The city was vast, lit red, save for blue lights that blinked in patternless intervals atop the taller spires and rooftops. Stone-winged cathedrals, with many stained-glass eyes, crouched like tarantulas amidst the skyscrapers. Cruel looking helicopters, noses angled low, roamed between the buildings like wasps. When I glimpsed the vapor-lit streets, I saw loose gangs of figures in strange configurations, several lone people scuttling like crabs into and out of crooked alleys. I saw shadows of things maddeningly large and unthinkably shaped where the corners of light met the shadows.
I became aware of the car radio, then. Classical music played backward, while a timpani raged and a voice muttered darkly in what must have been Old or Middle English. I remember being afraid to look at the passenger seat. Someone was sitting there, and it seemed vital that I not look, lest...lest what?
Would I lose control of the car and plunge into the oily river? Would I turn to salt or dissolve into corrosive sand? Would I go irretrievably mad? But I wanted to look. I thought that maybe my father sat shotgun, and that he knew where we were going. I looked, and there he was, tall, knees up, grinning at me through two layers of teeth under a voluminous mustache. He had short, neat hair parted severely on the side, betraying a thin line of grey scalp that curved like a scythe.
I saw that a leech was clasped onto his neck near the adam's apple, and it was pulsing. Jesus, Dad, I said, and reached over. I worked my fingers under the side of the foul thing, peeling it off of his cold skin, leaving a pattern of blue bruises. My father looked at me and gestured with his eyes. I put the leech onto my neck and felt it latch on, felt it beat like a fat black heart.
I blinked and he was gone, again, and he was back. He pointed, then flickered and faded away.
I followed the direction in which his bony finger had indicated, and ahead a bright light shone in the road, up where the lane split. I drove on, and between the north and southbound lanes a construction crew worked under daylight-bright industrial lamps. I saw them through a gauzy fog of dust and strong light...they wore blood-red vests and hardhats and massive goggles, and as the road sank I saw that the workers were bone thin, with skeletal jaws and long teeth. They labored on platforms over gaping holes in the earth, and among the men, piled atop rickety pallets, lolled babies, piles of them, in ashy cerements. I could not tell whether the crew was excavating or burying them.
The leech pulsed at my neck. I looked at my arms and they hung in flaps over my bones. I looked down and my legs were bones jutting under my jeans.
I snapped awake.
My mother stood above me. "Your father GAVE you those dreams," she said. "Learn from them."
I looked at her and closed my eyes again, fading against my will back into the dream. Now I drove in morning light on a curving road through verdant valleys and soft, lush hills. The passenger seat was mercifully untenanted. I heard a thundering sound in the distance, and as I crested the next hill I saw a herd of goats galloping madly over the grass, ridden by gaunt, decrepit angels with crushed and singed wings. The goats' eyes burned and seethed; the angels looked stunned, exhausted. Their faces were the faces of the demented and the doomed: shadowed, creased, despondent. Their eyes were black orbs that showed no whites, their slack lips thin and blue.
I tried to swerve, as did the herd, but try though I may I crushed two of their number under my wheels, and again I woke.
My mother was sitting beside my bed in her nightcoat, gnawing on her fingernails. Through her fingers she told me that my father's brother had died, and that we were to undertake what she termed a "purging" of the house. (To be continued)
I suppose I should have known that she was my real mother. We shared a resolute nose and wide-set eyes that, if they were any closer to our ears, would have rendered us unattractive, if not freakish.
What I don't know, even now, is the purpose of the deception in the first place. When confronted, she'd deflect the question or else proclaim that she "had her reasons." Presumably she had her reasons too for finally revealing the truth, and at that particular time in my (or her) life. I don't know if she thought through what the effect might have been. I hadn't quite reached the age where I was determined to find my real parents, and hadn't shown much interest. I was a quiet boy, liked trying to invent things, liked chasing animals around or proclaiming myself King of The Woods in a crown of construction paper, wielding a storm-tossed branch as some kind of vague weapon. But now I wanted to know about my real father. And there was no information forthcoming.
My mother, I knew, had played folk guitar. She was an idealist, and one of those quasi-hippies always hopping from cause to creed to church in lengthening cycles. I knew she'd sailed through minor cults and major communes, but never become tethered to any. Perhaps she'd met the man in one of these places. I was determined to find out, somehow.
The night she told me, I dreamed vividly. I was lost, driving down a lonesome backwoods road in the dark of night, when through the trees I saw an orange glow. Cresting a hill, I saw that below me lay a massive city, not previously suggested by any signs or geography...just there, massive, in the leafy midst of the New England hinterlands.
In a blink, I was driving on a deserted highway amidst tall black buildings with windows glowing red and shadows dancing somewhere within. Alongside the elevated highway raged and roiled a black river, bisected by ornate, spired bridges that passed somewhere below the road on which I drove. Looming above the arches and the terraces, a large skyscraper seemed to rise before me, tattooed with an enormous, neon red inverted cross. Below the cross sprawled unreadable letters that looked vaguely Arabic.
The city was vast, lit red, save for blue lights that blinked in patternless intervals atop the taller spires and rooftops. Stone-winged cathedrals, with many stained-glass eyes, crouched like tarantulas amidst the skyscrapers. Cruel looking helicopters, noses angled low, roamed between the buildings like wasps. When I glimpsed the vapor-lit streets, I saw loose gangs of figures in strange configurations, several lone people scuttling like crabs into and out of crooked alleys. I saw shadows of things maddeningly large and unthinkably shaped where the corners of light met the shadows.
I became aware of the car radio, then. Classical music played backward, while a timpani raged and a voice muttered darkly in what must have been Old or Middle English. I remember being afraid to look at the passenger seat. Someone was sitting there, and it seemed vital that I not look, lest...lest what?
Would I lose control of the car and plunge into the oily river? Would I turn to salt or dissolve into corrosive sand? Would I go irretrievably mad? But I wanted to look. I thought that maybe my father sat shotgun, and that he knew where we were going. I looked, and there he was, tall, knees up, grinning at me through two layers of teeth under a voluminous mustache. He had short, neat hair parted severely on the side, betraying a thin line of grey scalp that curved like a scythe.
I saw that a leech was clasped onto his neck near the adam's apple, and it was pulsing. Jesus, Dad, I said, and reached over. I worked my fingers under the side of the foul thing, peeling it off of his cold skin, leaving a pattern of blue bruises. My father looked at me and gestured with his eyes. I put the leech onto my neck and felt it latch on, felt it beat like a fat black heart.
I blinked and he was gone, again, and he was back. He pointed, then flickered and faded away.
I followed the direction in which his bony finger had indicated, and ahead a bright light shone in the road, up where the lane split. I drove on, and between the north and southbound lanes a construction crew worked under daylight-bright industrial lamps. I saw them through a gauzy fog of dust and strong light...they wore blood-red vests and hardhats and massive goggles, and as the road sank I saw that the workers were bone thin, with skeletal jaws and long teeth. They labored on platforms over gaping holes in the earth, and among the men, piled atop rickety pallets, lolled babies, piles of them, in ashy cerements. I could not tell whether the crew was excavating or burying them.
The leech pulsed at my neck. I looked at my arms and they hung in flaps over my bones. I looked down and my legs were bones jutting under my jeans.
I snapped awake.
My mother stood above me. "Your father GAVE you those dreams," she said. "Learn from them."
I looked at her and closed my eyes again, fading against my will back into the dream. Now I drove in morning light on a curving road through verdant valleys and soft, lush hills. The passenger seat was mercifully untenanted. I heard a thundering sound in the distance, and as I crested the next hill I saw a herd of goats galloping madly over the grass, ridden by gaunt, decrepit angels with crushed and singed wings. The goats' eyes burned and seethed; the angels looked stunned, exhausted. Their faces were the faces of the demented and the doomed: shadowed, creased, despondent. Their eyes were black orbs that showed no whites, their slack lips thin and blue.
I tried to swerve, as did the herd, but try though I may I crushed two of their number under my wheels, and again I woke.
My mother was sitting beside my bed in her nightcoat, gnawing on her fingernails. Through her fingers she told me that my father's brother had died, and that we were to undertake what she termed a "purging" of the house. (To be continued)