Title : Fathers and Sons, Chapter 3
Genre: Drama
Rating : I'm gonna rate the story PG-13 overall for some swearing in later chapters, but this one is pretty PG.
Summary : Relationships between parents and children are never easy. And conversations with overly literal three-year-old geniuses are difficult and confusing when there are no easy answers, even for the warden.
Author's Note : The quotes in here are from a real book, "Science 101 : Physics" by Barry Parker. Good librarian cites her sources.
Beta : Without sharelle, this would not exist. No really.
"Warden?" a small voice asked.
The warden glanced up from his work, surprised to see Blue standing nervously in the doorway, and clutching a familiar book.
"Can you read me another story?" the boy asked shyly.
That in and of itself was odd. Usually the warden had to tear the child away from his latest drawings and sketches at this time of day because dinner was being served.
"You already had two chapters this afternoon, Blue. And you should be getting ready for dinner."
And you should be in your cell, the man thought, though he had long since given up on actually trying to keep the boy locked in. The child pretty much had full run of the place during the day, though the guards were careful to keep him out of solitary or restricted areas.
Plus, the boy was perfectly capable of reading most of the book himself. While the warden felt it was important to maintain some type of discipline, he also knew it was rare for the child to want to be read to at this time of day. And even more rare for him to come up to the office to ask for it. Something was up.
"Please? Just one more?" the boy begged, hugging the book to himself.
The warden groaned. He really needed to finish this prisoner transfer paperwork. But as he studied the boy currently haunting the entrance to his office, he took note of something else troubling: Blue looked upset.
He glanced again at the pleading green eyes that were focused upon him. Now that the warden thought on it, the boy had seemed quiet and funny this afternoon as well. Usually when the warden stopped by to see him on his lunch hour the boy wanted to show off his latest drawings or play elaborate make-believe games. But today the little blue boy had only wanted to be read to and had been abnormally quiet.
The warden sighed, resigned. There was no denying that the boy looked confused and upset about something.
"Okay. Just one. Then back to your cell before dinner." He made a show of relenting.
The boy raced in and jumped onto the brown leather couch. The warden couldn't help but chuckle as he watched young blue fingers eagerly pry the book open to where they had left off. He got up from behind his desk and sat on the couch beside the boy, who instantly curled next to him and set the book onto the warden's lap.
"I don't know why you want me to read it again. We've already read this one twice. I could get you a new book."
"No." The boy shook head firmly. "I like this one."
"Okay," the warden chuckled and resumed a familiar cadence.
"…. After it was found that spectral lines split in a magnetic field, a third quantum number was added. It was called the magnetic quantum number and was represented by m. The values of m were the same as l, except they extended into-"
"That's wrong," the boy interrupted, pointing at one of the diagrams; some incomprehensible thing with squiggly lines and bars.
"What?"
"That's wrong," the boy repeated.
"The picture is wrong?" the warden attempted to clarify.
"No, this ratio. It doesn't work with the vari-abe-les in the fields". The boy let out an irritated sigh and his voice sounded wounded.
"Okay..." The warden wasn't sure what else to say to that. But he had a distinct feeling the child's distress wasn't really about the book.
The boy huffed and crossed his arms in front of him. The warden looked down at him for a long moment. Yes, something was definitely bothering him, that much he could tell. Cautiously, he resumed reading.
"It is easy to see that if you go out far enough, the recessional velocity will eventually reach the velocity of light in that a galaxy twice as far out is receding twice as fast. But according to Einstein's theory of relativity, the velocity of light is the limiting velocity in the universe. This implies that galaxies beyond this point can't exist, and therefore this is the end of our observable universe."
He took a breath and started to turn the page when he heard the boy sniffle. He looked at him closer and noticed that his eyes were watery. The boy looked like he was about to cry.
"Blue, what on earth is the matter?" he implored, shutting the book and trying to make eye contact.
"I miss my parents," he choked out as his lower lip quivered and the tears threatened to fall. The warden just blinked.
Well. That was not what he would have guessed. At all.
"Oh, umm, okay," he stammered and put his arm awkwardly around the boy's back, trying to rein in his surprise. It made sense he would miss his family but he had never really cried about it before. How much could you miss someone you only knew for 8 days?
Ugh. The sudden stab of irrational jealousy he felt at the boy's feelings made him feel like a horse's ass. And of course he would long for his real family – no matter how short he had known them. The warden pushed through it and collected his thoughts.
"Where is Minion?" he asked. The fish was good for things like this. Apparently he was a little older than the boy and knew more about their home world. The warden was surprised that the boy hadn't immediately turned to his fish instead.
"I left him in my cell," the child let out between small sobs, burying his face in the warden's side.
"Do you want to go talk to him?" the warden asked cautiously.
"No!" the boy gripped his side with a desperate ferocity. "I wanna stay with you. Don't send me away! Don't go." The child was gripping him like a barnacle and crying harder.
Oh boy.Time to totally change tactics before he just made this abandonment complex worse.
"Oh, okay, you don't have to go get him", he said, stroking the side of the child's head as he cried. "I'm not going anywhere Blue, look I'm right here."
He let the boy cry it out, hating it all the while. He hated seeing the kid in pain. He hated that there was nothing he could do besides let it happen, and impotently dry his tears afterward. It was the kind of problem he couldn't cure, he couldn't fix. The warden could quell a prison disturbance with a few well-placed orders, but he couldn't uncollapse a black hole, he couldn't give the boy the family he should have had.
Then there was that other voice in the back of his head. The one that said he could do better – that he could give the boy a real home. The voice that said the little blue boy would be better off adopted out to a nice normal family – a family who could give him a swing set and a dog and send him away to summer camp. The voice that said it he shouldn't be trying to raise a child in a prison in the first place; that his motivation of keeping the boy safe and off the radar was just a cover for his own selfishness.
And he hated that voice, too. Probably most of all.
Eventually the boy's tears slowed and he looked up at the warden with sad eyes that betrayed more than what he was actually saying.
"What happened today?" the warden finally pressed.
There was a long pause.
"One of the other prisoners told me to go back to my own planet." The way he said it made clear there was much more to this story.
"Who?" the warden demanded. The boy just nibbled his bottom lip and wrinkled his brow.
"I don't know," he whispered guiltily.
Well that was a bold-faced lie. Unfortunately spending time around all the inmates had given the child more than simply the training to be a master escape artist. It had also ingrained some of their moral codes on the boy - namely that you don't rat.
The warden furrowed his brow.
"I know you know, Blue. Tell me."
The boy just squeezed his eyes closed tightly and shook his head.
This was a problem. But one for another time.
"Okay. When did this happen?"
"Breakfast." That at least explained his introversion at lunchtime.
"Is there something else?" the warden pressed. There was a long pause as the boy knitted his brow further, then looked up at the warden and finally spoke.
"Are you my daddy?"
Wow, he had really not expected that.
Maybe he should have assumed the subject would come up sooner rather than later. He had always meant to prepare some kind of stock answer on the topic but now he was caught unawares.
"Ummm," the warden stammered as he tried to put together something coherent. Before he could come up with anything, the boy huffed and pressed on.
"Because I know you're not my father but Wally Jenkins said that he was a daddy today and I asked him what that was. And he said that 'any idiot can be a father but not everyone can be a daddy'. And I asked if I had a daddy and he said that you were probably my daddy but he didn't sound very sure to me."
The boy was looking up at him, seeming both frustrated and confused. The warden took a big breath as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Jenkins had gotten a call today that his wife had given birth to a daughter. The man was serving a 20 year sentence and by the time he was even eligible for parole his baby would be a teenager.
"Well Blue," he took a deep breath and tried to think of how to phrase it. "Some people would probably say I'm like your daddy. But daddy is one of those words like love that has multiple meanings. Some people say it means father, some people think it means something more… emotional."
The boy screwed up his face.
There was no denying the child was exceptionally smart. He was about to turn four and he could understand demonstrable and provable things like physics with ease. But he struggled with language, and it wasn't just pronunciations. He had a hard time with emotions and abstracts.
"I don't understand. I had a father?" Blue said it like a question, but they both knew he knew the answer. In fact the boy claimed to be able to remember his parents despite only being 8 days old when he was put into the pod and sent across the stars.
"Yes you did," the warden tread lightly, letting the boy steer the conversation where he needed to go.
"And he's gone now. Dead. That means never coming back?"
They had been through this over and over again and so had the fish. The little blue boy knew the answer, but he seemed to feel a compulsive need to ask and then found relief in being told the answers.
"Yes, unfortunately he's never coming back, Blue," the warden answered with honest sympathy. He gave the boy a moment and then pressed on. "You miss them a lot, don't you?" The boy just sniffled and nodded before he spoke.
"They would be like me," he whispered.
"Oh Blue." The warden wrapped his arms around the boy tighter.
"Then we would all be blue".
That broke his heart. After a long pause, the boy resumed his questions.
"So how come Wally said you were my daddy?" he said, head cocked to the side and expression puzzled.
"Probably because I take care of you," the warden answered simply. And because I love you and want to be, he thought.
"If my father were alive would he be my daddy?" The boy was still trying to wrap his large brain around the difficult concept.
"It would depend on how one defined it, but probably. And I'm not trying to replace him." There was the crux of the issue.
There was another long pause.
"Do I need a daddy?"
"No, you don't need one. Lots of people don't have them."
The boy seemed somewhat satisfied with that answer. Then he screwed up his face again and looked the warden directly in the eye.
"Can you be a daddy and a warden at the same time?"
The warden guffawed a little at that question, but it held back in when the boy frowned at him.
"Yes," he answered simply.
"Oh." The boy was quiet and chewed his bottom lip, the way he did when he was pondering something truly difficult. "Okay."
Then he looked back up at the warden. "Can we finish this chapter? You promised one more," the blue little boy reminded him.
"So I did," the warden said with smile.
He opened the book and the boy relaxed against his side. And as he began to read again, he truly hoped that he hadn't completely screwed that conversation up.