(A/N: Lyrics are (c) Audioslave, and the song is "Like a Stone". Read and Review! I wrote this in, like, 10 minutes. My muse has been working overtime lately.)
He wandered around the big, empty house, nothing but a lost little boy. Lately he always felt alone, and at the moment he was, while his father was at the Cove Funeral Home making the arrangements.
Little Benjamin Pierce.
When he went off to cry, Daniel would follow him up the huge ornate staircase at a reasonable distance, then stand outside the door and rest his head against the wall as he listened to his son's sobs.
Ben always sought solitude in his mother's bedroom. Shelves lined the walls, stocked with books of all kinds. Marie had loved to read, but of all her scholarly possessions, her favorite was her family Bible. She had read out of it to Ben every night of his childhood, until she was too weak to hold the heavy volume.
On a cobweb afternoon
in a room full of emptiness,
by a freeway, I confess
I was lost in the pages
of a book, full of death,
reading how we'll die alone,
and if we're good, we'll lay to rest,
anywhere we wanna go.
Today wasn't any different. Wiping his black hair out of his eyes, the ten year old slowly ascended the stairs and went straight down the hallway. He turned the worn brass knob into his mother's bedroom and headed straight for the rocking chair, and the Bible that was sitting on the bedside stand.
In your house,
I long to be
Room by room,
Patiently
I'll wait for you there,
Like a stone
I'll wait for you there,
Alone.
Each day, when he looked into the time-worn pages, Ben couldn't help but cry. The leather cover felt warm from the sunlight streaming through the window, and he imagined that it was still warm because his mother's touch had graced it only minutes before, when she was reading to him.
But it wasn't.
And he imagined that night - less than a week ago - and it felt like it had been a lifetime.
And on my deathbed, I will pray
to the Gods and the Angels,
Like a Pagan, to anyone
who will take me to Heaven.
To a place, I recall,
I was there so long ago
The sky was bruised, the wine was bled,
And there you led me on.
He never knew it was going to happen. Daniel had only told Ben that Marie was sick, had the flu, or a cold. There was no real way to break to his son that his mother had cancer, and that she wouldn't recover. So each day, Ben prayed for his mother to get better so she could keep reading to him. Sing to him. She could go outside and play with him, like she used to. To bake her cookies, famous all over Crabapple Cove.
But she never did.
The doctor came down the stairs to where Ben and Daniel were trying to enjoy a simple meal. A couple of fish that Ben had proudly caught down at the creek, hardly aware of the struggle for life that his mother was quickly losing. Doctor Morey put his hand on Daniel's shoulder and said quietly "I'm sorry, Dan. She's gone."
Ben looked at his father, fear and confusion all over his face as Daniel put his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving with silent sobs, their dinners untouched.
In your house,
I long to be
Room by room,
Patiently
I'll wait for you there,
Like a stone
I'll wait for you there,
Alone.
Fifteen years later, Benjamin Pierce sat on the sofa in the living room, in his lap another of the books his mother cherished. It was Moby Dick.
"Hawk, letter for ya."
Daniel's face was pale and his hands were shaking as he handed the letter to Ben. It was from the draft board. Ben, trying to use his humor to cover up, as always, failed to come up with something witty to say. He just opened the letter.
His blue eyes filled with fear and disbelief as he dropped the letter, got up off the sofa, and headed up the staircase. Daniel sank down into his vacated seat as he heard the door to Marie's old room shut quietly.
~*~
Ben was lying on a cold, hard cot, under a flimsy blanket and on a flat pillow, his body shaking and his heart pounding. He hadn't seen his father in two weeks. It was like losing his mother all over again, only now he didn't have another parent to lean on. He didn't even have the Bible...
Sitting up and wincing at the squeak his cot made, Ben reached out and snatched Major Burns' Bible off his footlocker. It would do. He opened it up and began to read in the darkness, the familiar words doing little to lift his spirits. Quietly, into his pillow, he began to cry.
And on I read,
until the day was gone.
And I sat in regret,
of all the things I'd done.
For all that I'd blessed,
and all that I'd wronged,
in dreams until my death,
I will wander on...
In your house,
I long to be
Room by room,
Patiently
I'll wait for you there,
Like a stone
I'll wait for you there,
Alone.