The Attic

 Adolescence was painful enough for a skinny redhead with freckles. Charlie was 13. His kid bother was in kindergarten. Charlie didn’t know then, but his Dad had been abused as a child in rural South Carolina.

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.