Thanks to Cal Gal and Lucky Ladybug for betaing.
Aaron Buckley
In a way, I feel like Ishmael in Moby-Dick, echoing the words of Job's servants: "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." I only am left alone of my father's children - or rather, of his sons. But Naomi is merely his ward, adopted, not really family. Not like my brothers.
Most of my brothers.
Four of us, four brothers, all born together. Father followed the simple expedient of naming us alphabetically. I was first, Aaron, then Benjamin, then Caleb. Then… I have always wondered why my father chose that name for the last of his sons. Why Dimas? Why not a fine noble name to match the rest of us: David perhaps, or Daniel? The name Dimas doesn't even appear in Scripture, being merely a name given by tradition to the penitent thief crucified with the Christ. A robber, a "bad guy." Why? Did Father name him so out of spite, for Mother gasped out her last breath as she loosed Dimas into the world. Or, as I look around at all the carnage my youngest brother has brought about, I wonder if Father named him that out of precognition.
At any rate, I often thought that, with a name like Dimas, my brother never even had a chance to turn out well. And I was right. Too right.
Well. Father did try. Oh, he tried so hard for Dimas before he at last surrendered him to the scientific studies of Dr Liebig. He thought he was doing what was best for Dimas. It wasn't, but how was he, how were any of us, to know? How were we to know that Dimas, raised by that expert on apes, raised apart from the rest of us, Dimas the Giant, would become at the last Dimas the Mad, ready to wipe out the rest of us? His brothers one by one, perhaps even Naomi, leaving himself alone as our father's heir, and then no doubt he would kill Father as well.
It was only the fact that Mr West was here, sent by the president to insist on Father's presence in the Senate, that saved us - or what remained of us - in the end. West fought Dimas, acting very much like David fighting Goliath, I believe. And I believe Mr West must have had experience fighting giants, for he never quailed before Dimas. He brought him down, something none of the rest of us were able to do.
I alone am left. Father sits there at the bottom of the stairs with Dimas' great head cradled in his lap. Dimas the Dead, the Broken. Father is broken too, rasping to himself over and over again: "My son. Dimas, my son. What did I do to him? What did I do?"
I want to go to him and shake him, to scream in his face, "What did you do? But what did Dimas do, Father? He killed Fletcher, then Benjamin, then Caleb! He was ready to kill Naomi and me, and finally you!" But then I think of Joab railing against King David when David was mourning over his son: "O Absalom my son! My son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" Joab spoke sharply to the king, telling him his loud mourning for his traitorous son who had tried to kill him made the sacrifices of those who had protected the king from Absalom seem like nothing.
And I always thought Joab was being unfair to David; I wished he would have left the king alone in his time of grief. Can I then do any less for my own father now in his? Today, this moment, Father grieves for Dimas. He has already mourned for our foreman Fletcher, and after that for my brother Benjamin, and soon enough Father will mourn as well for my brother Caleb when he too joins the fresh graves in the cemetery. So for now, I will leave Father alone to find his own way through the Hell of our losses.
My three brothers are all dead, and in a way, so is Father. Or at least, Senator Buckley is dead. The man Mr West and his partner Mr Gordon came here to escort to Washington - no, he will never return there now. Not to sit in the Senate, not to judge wisely anymore, if indeed he ever did. He is gone. Let him go. Let the dead bury their dead.
What thoughts course through my mind this day! But then, who in all of history has ever suffered such great losses at such great speed? Ah, yes: Job. "I only am escaped alone to tell thee." I was forgetting. In the end, God reversed Job's losses and restored to him all that the Enemy had stolen. But what of Father? His goods were not taken, only his sons. Will he, like Job, have new sons to replace the dead ones? For I cannot imagine my father taking a new bride and having more children in his old age.
No, I suppose that must fall to me. It is my duty to provide my father with grandchildren to cheer the twilight of his years. Another Benjamin, another Caleb, anoth… Oh, no. No, I will not name a son Dimas. David perhaps, or Daniel, but not the name of Dimas, not that cursèd name.
But is it in the name of Dimas that the curse lies? Or is it perhaps instead in the name of Buckley? What if I should have sons and one, or even all of them, should grow up to be like Dimas: hateful, evil, a serpent in my father's bosom, a grandson to bring down my father's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave?
No. I am resolved. If there are to be grandchildren, let them come from Naomi. Her blood at least is not tainted, as mine is.
FIN