Flight From the Pigpen
By Winslow Parker

He stared through his ghostly reflected image into dark night. Seventy stories below, city lights jeweled night's black velvet. Duties clamored for his attention, impatiently tugging him back to time and place. Neither lights nor duties broke into consciousness. Something within, near but far, welled up from the darkness of his memories.

Her perfume lingered no longer in their apartment. The shrill of her Parisian accent no longer echoed from the walls. It was not his memory of her. It was something earlier, deeper, something scented with earth and sky, of laughter and hard work. It wasn't parties or long cruises or weekends in newly-discovered hot spots. This antithesis of his world, the deeper longing, lay miles away and years ago.

The door opened, and, within his own reflected image, Barbara stood, framed by the light from the outer office.

"Will there be anything else, Mr. Prescott?"

"No, Barbara, thank you. Have a good night."

"Good night to you too, then, Mr. Prescott."

She paused for a moment, as if about to say something. She shook her head in concern and closed the door.

He turned from the window and settled into his chair. Through his steepled fingers, he stared at the closed door. For the first time, he wondered about her life outside the office. He knew she had family, betrayed by children's pictures on her desk. Once or twice she had asked for time off for family emergencies. He knew so little about her, though their lives intersected daily. He paid her well, but knew from deep worry lines there were concerns in her life about which he knew nothing.

His melancholy deepened.

Hours later, he settled into the leather seat of his limousine. He opened a small door and withdrew ice, tumbler and a small, elegant bottle. He poured amber liquid over the ice, enjoying the sound of cracking cubes. He sipped.

"Even this," he reflected, "now offers no respite."

Thoughts of how little he knew about Barbara and her life resurfaced. "In someone else," he mused, "I would have condemned myself as a complete egotist." Self-recrimination, new to him, shook his inner world.

He pressed a button lowering the privacy partition separating driver from passenger.

"Do you have family, Carl?"

Impassive professional eyes met his in the mirror then flicked back to duty.

"Yes, Mr. Prescott. Two sons, grown and gone, and a daughter finishing college, this June." A tinge of pride frayed the borders of his reserve.

"Do you see them often?"

"Not often enough."

"But you do see them? They come to see you?"

"Yes, they come home as often as they can. Their kids too. Now that's a real joy." He smiled a grandfather smile. His professional face slipped back into place.

They rode in silence. His thoughts turned to the miles between him and his home. He had never returned, once he left. He never visited with grandchildren for there were none. A sense of empty loneliness compressed his spirit. It was a living thing; a dead thing

Later, in his apartment, he wandered aimlessly from room to room. As he wandered, he touched a priceless sculpture, a valuable painting, unmindful of beauty or cost.

He fixed a sandwich, took a bite, threw it into the trash, tasteless.

Sitting at his desk, he drew his checkbook from the drawer, writing in "Jack Prescott, Sr." Shaking his head in angry self-disgust, he ripped it into confetti and brushed the shreds to the floor.

More Memories filtered into consciousness. Carefree childhood days rose from their carefully-constructed mausoleum. Happy days played on memory's screen--days when the world was big and it was all theirs to explore. Hills and valleys, streams and ponds, fields and pastures, they all belonged to him and Frank.

Frank. Other memories flooded in, now, a breaking dam. They overflowed, opening a well of nostalgia and pain. Tears flowed.

They were still working the land, no doubt; still coming in covered with the dust of plowing, underarms stained with the sweat of a hard day's work. In memory, he washed in the mud-room sink, then sat at the kitchen table with Mom, Dad and Frank. He relived the glow of kitchen heat and smelled the savory odors of his mother's hearty farm food. Afterward, settled in the living room, they watched the world news. His was a distant world, foreign to their insular lives. He longed for a slice of that long-dead world, a swallow of that warm family time.

He shook his head. His dream was impossible. The meeting was tomorrow. Too much at stake. A six-figure bonus if he succeeded, added to his seven-figure salary, it would go far toward his early-retirement goal. Visions of lazy days in the sun, leisurely games of golf, ski trips to exotic places, flitted across his inner vision.

The sorrow of too much and the pain of too little cascaded into a tsunami of grief. Tears streaked his cheeks, unremarked.

Four faces smiled their forgotten joy from the photo on his desk. Background clues betrayed the location, their favorite picnic spot, but not the event. Mom, helpless, was suspended between Frank and him, her arms on their shoulders, theirs around her back. They laughed holding her, feet dangling, a foot above the ground. Dad laughed with them. It must have been a time shot, with camera perched precariously on a picnic table top. He pictured Dad sprinting to get into the frame. The photo must have been taken long before he asked his father for the money, before his demand to be free of the land, free of the chores, the endless round of seasons. The seed was already present even then. Germinating, it produced the restless fruit of wandering, of looking at far horizons and longing to see the other side.

He remembered the feel of the cash in his hand, half of his father's life savings, the next year's seed money. He felt again the crisp new bills, and knew Dad had asked for them specifically. His father's gruff voice rough with emotion, warning him to divide the money between several pockets, so as not to lose it all to a thief. He remembered the pride of the first return on investment, the electric sizzle of success. Now, the golden boy was a middle-age financial powerhouse. No investment ever failed. "Midas," he thought, bitterly. Like the hapless ancient king, he knew the agony of being betrayed by his own dream.

Suddenly decisive, he turned to the desk. Seating himself, he took his checkbook once more, and wrote two checks, one to Barbara, one to Carl. After writing a hasty explanatory note to each, he called his lawyer, giving orders to the sleep-fogged voice on the other end.

"But, but...all of it?"

"I've made up my mind. I'll call you with what to do with my investments and property." Decision made, a strange joy overtook him.

He locked the door behind him, then bypassing the elevators he vaulted the stairs three at a time. Pivoting on the handrail, he rotated 180 degrees at each landing, riding a nearly-forgotten high of joy. He entered the garage level feeling the winged heels of Mercury bearing him along. He backed the BMW from its reserved space, knowing he would never park in it again.

His heart sang.

Twin Halogen bulbs thrust aside the darkness and pulled him forward into a vortex of peace. Tires hummed a bagpipe drone beneath a joyous skirl of anticipation.

Dark bats of doubt flitted the dark caverns of his thoughts, not doubts of his decision, but doubts of his reception. Would they, could they receive him back? How would they treat him? Maybe he could just work there, a hired hand, repay the money. That would take forever, he knew, at the pittance pay of farm hands.

Exhausted, he slept cocooned in his car at a truck stop. Bright sunlight woke him to a new day. The miles flowed beneath his tires.

Night spread her dark pall as he exited the freeway. Familiar streets, familiar trees grown huge, familiar buildings more than a bit worse for the intervening years greeted him. Like a missing tooth, the absence of the local teen hangout jarred him more than he wanted to admit. A chain restaurant, garish, was a discordant note played against the town's harmony.

Deep shadows enveloped him, again, as the town streets merged into county road. His palms began to sweat. He winced at the acid burn of his ulcer and tasted the bitter gall of uncertainty.

Around a gentle curve, he saw their graveled road, a literal and figurative point of no return. Fresh black and red paint adorned their mailbox, new but so very familiar. Trees filtered the porch light's golden glow, casting a lacy pattern on the hood of his car. The incandescent glory reached out to him, tugging him the last quarter mile.

Against its urge, he stopped the car, opened the window, and breathed the aromas of new-plowed earth, spring blossoms, hay and manure. Nostrils flaring, he filled his lungs and exhaled tasting, as much as smelling, the scent of home.

Faintly, as if only a distant murmur, family sounds drifted on the still air. Their voices were magnetic adding a new drawing power for the last and longest yards of his journey. From their conversational rhythm, he knew at what point they were in the meal.

Through the living room window, he saw faces turn toward the sound of the slammed car door. Uncertain, he stood and leaned against the car's roof. Sudden recognition blazed in his father's face. His chair crashed against the wall as he leaped to his feet and dashed to the door. The screen door, squealing in protest, slammed back against the outside wall. His father leaped from the top step, then, as if remembering his age, slowed, but, still, leaning forward in expectation, threw his arms around him.

"Dad, I...

"Quiet, Son. Come in to supper, we have a place set for you."

"A place? You didn't know I was coming."

"Every night it was set for you."

©1998, Winslow Parker, All Rights Reserved