He had escaped into the army air corps at the age of 16 with
forged papers and a little help from his Mother. He’d become a binge alcoholic,
like his father before him. He would stay gone for weeks at a time. You could
sense the storm brewing inside.
Sometimes it would reach gale force and devastate his
family.
His place at the supper table would sit empty and they would
know, the storm was coming. Charlie, his Mom and little brother would eat in nervous
silence.
They would find refuge at times in the home of an in-law.
She was a diminutive, auburn haired widow. His Mom called her Gerlene.
The children called her Mrs. Cobb. She lived alone in a small white house by
the railroad tracks.
Mrs. Cobb was a hoarder. One of the many things she liked to
hold on to were books. They were everywhere. volume upon volume of Funk and
Wagnall encyclopedias, history books, biographies, travel, politics, science and
nature.
Charlie was bored to death by all the ladies’ talk but this
was a dusty, musty wonderland.
It was a sunny spring morning as he sat at the battered antique
dining room table engrossed in a tome about U.S. presidents. The phone jangled
and he could tell by the breathy change in their voices that the ever-looming
storm had found them.
Panicking, they prepared to run out the back door until they heard a car door slam. Mrs. Cobb, frail hands quivering, peeked
through the cheap plastic blinds. When she turned, the color had drained from
her face.
“It’s him. Quick, HIDE!”
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM he banged on the front door roaring like
some primeval beast.
“Gerlene, let me in dammit! I know they’re here! He slurred.
“They’re not here Clint. You’re drunk. Go away!”
That only made him madder. He began to attack the door with
fury trying to kick it in. They could hear the casing begin to crack. Mrs. Cobb ran on tiptoes and pulled down the
attic steps and motioned for them to go up then lifted and shut the trap like
door behind them.
They huddled together in the dark. Slivers of daylight
seeped through the cracks enough they could barely make out their surroundings;
more books, old trunks, magazines and musty furniture. Dust
danced in thin shafts of light.
The commotion below was muffled but they could make out Mrs.
Cobb trying to reason with him. He wasn’t buying it though until she threatened
to call the cops. He seemed to drop it down a notch. The thing was if you locked
him up he’d get drunk when he got out and things would be even worse when he
found them.
Charlie could hear the click of the deadbolt and his heavy
shoes on the hardwood floors. He began to curse and threaten again. She had
always had a way of calming him down, but this time he was escalating.
“Tell me where they are or I’m gonna blow your brains out,
you old bag!”
Charlie’s heart was racing. His Dad always carried a gun and
the story was that when Charlie had been little his father had done a couple
years in prison for manslaughter with a gun.
Charlie saw his Mom move toward the attic door. He grabbed
her pale arm. It was pasty and cold. He knew that the sight of his Mom was like
pouring gasoline on a fire to his Dad when he was raging.
Mrs. Cobb screamed,
“CLINT, I’ve had enough. I’ve always treated you with
respect and I’ll not have you coming into my home and threatening me! You should
be ashamed of yourself, threatening an old woman. I told you they are not here.
Leave now or you WILL GO TO JAIL!
The knot in Charlie’s throat was so big he felt like he was
choking. He was horrified that his little brother was going to sneeze in the
dusty attic and give them away. His Mom had frozen in place, Charlie still
holding on to her arm for dear life to keep her from revealing them. He could
see his brother’s huge eyes even in the dark pleading for Charlie to save them.
Silence … there was only silence, like at the supper table.
Charlie could hear their own breathing. It sounded so loud in his pounding ears
he couldn’t believe his old man couldn’t hear it too.
Clint mumbled something. Then, like a miracle, the
heavy shoes were stomping out the door. He heard the deadbolt click and
realized he was holding his breath and soaked in sweat. It was running down his
back and sides. He had wrapped his free arm around his brother, his head buried deep in Charlie’s bony chest.
It seemed an eternity before the attic door creaked open and
the rickety steps telescoped downward into the light. Mrs. Cobb peered up at
them.
“He’s gone. You can come down. I don’t think he’ll come back
anytime soon. “
Charlie knew something had changed that day in
that musty attic. When he crawled out, a fire had begun to smolder. He vowed
that no one would ever make him feel that way again. He’d gone into the attic
an idealistic, bookworm. He’d come out something else.
He’d moved into adult life seeming to seek a violent
world with a chip on his shoulder. He’d survived by making those around him
think that it was not worth the hassle to confront or attack him. He made them
think that he was just crazy enough, just mean enough to make them pay. Maybe
he was. Maybe he wasn’t. In the end the only thing that mattered was that they
believed he could.
One day the pain and misery of living like that brought
Charlie to the end of his rope. His life had become unmanageable and he came to
believe that the only way he could survive was to surrender to God’s will as he
understood him.
He could have come out of the attic abhorring violence. Intellectually
he did feel that way but if threatened, the rage at his father would come over
him.
Married and with kids, Charlie tried to work with adolescents
and let them know as best he could that he cared for them. He had become a
grizzled old cuss. Sometimes little babies would cry and he’d know they could
feel the smoldering at his core but he learned that a hug or kiss or a
reassuring hand on a shoulder might make the difference in a kid’s life.
If he could just listen … really listen … maybe, he could touch
them somehow. Maybe he could pull them back from the secret fire of violence
before it was too late.
