Sinking
Traitor they called him. Stab in the heart and spit in his face. He, a traitor, selling lives and information to Russia. Betraying all he held dear to the Red Devil. He could not make them believe; they did not want to hear his truth. He truth remained constant. They could not accept his truth. TRUTH. What a funny word.
And Arvin, the snake camouflaged in the grass, playing both sides. His friend and his confessor. His sympathy and his accuser, looking for open wounds and inserting red-hot pokers. Twisting and turning, red-hot pain rushes over his soul in waves. Whispers and pats on the back urging him to be cooperative for Sydney's sake. The snake would deliver stories, drawing and pictures of and from his little girl, tempting him with a reunion to the only good part of him left. All he needed to do was agree, give in and become the traitor that they supposed him to be.
Books with mysterious writing, dead agents, missing papers; what did he know! Documents and photographs were placed before him to identify. Who were his contacts, what were the signals, where were the codes? There had to be money, where was it hidden? Maps and diagrams were drawn on large pieces of paper. He talked for minutes, hours and days and no one heard a word he said.
A lonely room. Artificial light and lumpy mattress and silence. No swirls of crayon on construction paper. No bedtime stories nestled in pink and white safety. No little girl hugs and kisses and breakfast with Daddy. Six months alone. Six months alone.
First he tried to get paper and pencil to write his thoughts. No, too dangerous; he was a trained killer. He had killed his colleagues. No privileges for the traitor. Books, a chessboard, a picture of his daughter were all denied. Gray walls shouted at him. Gray walls with eyes judged him. Gray walls convicted him without hearing a word he said.
He began playing chess in his mind to stay sharp. Reciting Keats, Kennedy and poetry learned as a child. Singing nursery rhymes and snippets of songs. He dissected the Red threat. He strategized and won the Cuban Missile Crisis. He decided that it wasn't a lone gunman after all. He determined where the weaknesses in the government system were; and recollected the decisive victories in World War Two. He quoted all of Hamlet. He recited the periodic table and expounded on game theory. He re-defended his doctorate to the gray walls and camera eyes. He occupied space and time, but lived in neither. He resisted retreat, he shied away from dreams; seducing like the sirens call.
He described Sydney with excruciating detail. She tended to play with her hair when concentrating. Her laugh reminded him of his mother. The stubborn set of her chin was a reflection of his own and his father's. He remembered attending little girl tea parties with water and cookies and stuffed animals. She loved the "Sgt. Pepper and the Lonely Hearts Club Band" album and had to listen to it at least once per day. He could feel her standing on his shoes, whispering little girl secrets in his ear. How she would only eat red Popsicles and hated creamed corn. He could see her swirling around the living room to the Glenn Miller orchestra and tossing multi-colored leaves in the air. He could see him and her (because he had stopped saying her name months ago) discovering that Sydney could read at the age of four. He recalled pictures of Sydney learning to walk by pushing an overturned laundry basket around the living room floor.
Only one path was not explored, she whose name could not be spoken. He had no perspective; only memories, unreliable and tainted. Soon sleepless hours wore at his resistance. He had reached his breaking point; he would accept their truth. He decided bravery wasn't so brave after all.
One last hour of resistance, one last line drawn in the sand, one more Alamo before the slaughter. He became brave one day; there was meatloaf and mash potatoes and carrots. He hated cooked carrots. Laura knew. Laura knew. Laura KNEW.
Then the tide changed.
And the waves crashed over him more brutal than before. Not her, of the sparkling eyes and red lips. Not her of the sighs in the dark and bright smiles. Not him at all but her; an undertow for a drowning man. Sinking further and further.
And his blood began to simmer and the truth floated to the top. Illusion and misdirection. He had been masterfully deceived. The game player had been played, and he bled again. Icy cold water thrown in his face.
And he began to feel again, little by little. Sorrow, enveloping and gray. His baby, oh his poor baby. What was to become of her? How could he look at her, with the same eyes and wide smile and not begin to thaw and then ache all over again?
Sorrow turned on its head. It evolved, mutated, and broke out of the cocoon into a winged avenger. Powerful hate. Hate for those accusers, hate for the condescension of the snake, hate for his jailers. Contempt, sharp and bitter. And he drank of the wine of emotion, like a dehydrated man. He ate at the banquet of rage and revenge, cold and plotting. Sinking slowly into the whirlpool of hate for shining brown eyes and red lips and sighs in the dark.
And Laura died and he died inside again.