Most Men's Lives .

Most Men's Lives

"We're two years into this now -" Eric paced the kitchen holding the phone to his ear with his daughter, Alex, on the other arm, "No. You need to stop..." Alex fidgeted. She had woken 20 minutes earlier to the phone ringing. "Please, you woke Alex...yes. Don't - " Eric took the phone away from his ear and set it gently on the kitchen table. He held Alex in front of him and tried to make eye contact. No luck, she was focused on his father's hands. Alex wrapped her forefinger half-way around the base of Eric's thumb and stared at it. They were quiet for a long time, Eric clutched Alex tight and suddenly his breath quickened, face flushed and eyes watered. He kissed his daughter's forehead and whispered, "I'm sorry babe, oh, I am sorry. You'll be okay. I promise."

                               - - - - -

"The problem as I see it is fathers don't talk to their sons. Simple as that. And it's an awful thing, but hard. You want to, everyday you say you'll do it, you'll tell him exactly what you're thinking. You'll tell him," Ralph paused, struck by an intangible realization, "that you don't know what you're doing."

Ralph Fisher had two sons. One had died only two weeks before. Eddie Fisher had been walking home from a party, dressed in dark clothes, and a man who had never had a problem driving the one and one half miles home from the bar hit him with a 1982 bright blue Buick Skylark. Ralph never got around to writing out a proper eulogy, but his audience sat in reverent silence as he tried to figure it out.

"It's true. I've never had any idea how to be a father to these boys. I don't think anyone knows how to be a father. No book will tell you, and your own father couldn't talk about it. And I know that now. I know that." Another pause, he was lost in this tangent but wanted it to mean something. "I...Eddie and I did not understand each other. I wish that I had treated him like a man and told him the truth every day. Eddie," Ralph turned to face the casket for the first time, "when you were born I was so scared. So scared for you, Eddie. I knew I would forget something, or tell you one thing and do another. I wasn't who you should have been learning from. I was always scared of you because I knew I would fail. And I have, but nothing has made me happier in this world than you, and I hope you can forgive me."

The man who hit Eddie was Adam Tedford. When he hit Eddie with the car he pulled over and looked out of the driver's side window, trying to see what it was. Adam's entire experience of the collision was a dull thump and a brief loss of control of the car. He got out and walked back a few yards, looking for whatever he may have hit. Unfortunately for Eddie he was unconscious, or everything might have been different. Hearing and seeing nothing in the dark, Adam assumed it must have been a dog, maybe a fox, and he continued his drive home.

Ralph looked out on the rows of mourners and felt claustrophobic and angry. He wanted to be alone with his son. He wanted that church of voyeurs to go away, "That's not him in the casket, you know. It's pieces of him. Ash. I was fine with an urn, but everyone told me it wasn't right. Indecorous. That was the word. Who the hell of you said that to me? Some woman told me it was indecorous and I didn't want to fight, but that is not my son in there. He's not filling that. It's for show so everyone can forget that he was so mangled we had to burn him. We burned my son. We set my son on fire. We burned him. We burned him." Ralph didn't think he would break down. Lucky for decorum's sake several other people thought he might. Brian, lifelong friend and occasional co-worker, walked up to the podium. He put his arm around Ralph and quietly ushered him off the stage.

Eddie was the victim of coincidence. He landed in the deepest part of a ditch, in shadow. His parents were not expecting him home, and there was almost no foot traffic along the road. He lay dying for twelve hours; slipping in and out of consciousness. Eddie's experience of the collision began with a back breaking blow followed by a wet thump that left much of his face on the bark of a tree. After that it was mostly delirium. The worst of it were the moments of lucidity when he knew exactly what was happening to him but couldn't make any noise over the traffic, and could not move. When it occurred to Eddie that he was dying he did not ask forgiveness for a life of sin, he did not seek Jesus in his last moments. All he wanted was his father.

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Adam Tedford grew up in small town in west Texas; a short drive from El Paso. Despite the meager population Adam grew up in the middle of an awkward celebrity. His father was the miracle walker. It was the name local papers gave him after several unceremonious walks across busy highways outside of town one summer. Adam's friends called Mr. Tedford the Mud Talker. It was very hard to understand him. He spoke as though a reservoir of cream would pour from his bottom lip if he didn’t maintain perfect control. It effected his breathing, so if Mr. Tedford wanted you to understand something he’d stare, breathing heavily, as each syllable was given its own consideration. He was terrifying for this, and Adam had long ago given up on empathy.

When he walked, Adam wished, quietly, that his father would die. Adam hated his life, as adolescents are wont to do, and thought having him dead would make it better. Mr. Tedford was not a bad man, he always told Adam he loved him, and his faith in God was perfect. Adam's was not. God never took Mr. Tedford, so Adam doubted God. He was a monster of a child whose father was the local bogeyman. Kids joked that Adam had no mother, that his father created him. Adams mother had left immediately after he was born. No romance or breakdown, she just got in her car and drove away. Adam had no memory of the woman, not even photographs. His father hated photographs.

Occasionally, while flipping through the channels, Adam would see stock footage of his father in the middle of a highway; cars narrowly avoiding him. The sound was always dampened so you couldn’t hear the horns and screams. A voice-over, typically male, would say “You’ve heard of the miracle worker? Well we’ve got the miracle walker for you, coming up after these commercials.” Adam was transfixed every time. It was amazing to watch this slight, near feeble, man taking slow, deliberate steps, not looking at the oncoming traffic, upper lip moving rapidly, as though in conversation. Adam once asked him what he was saying, Mr. Tedford told him, “Just answering some questions.”

There was never an interview attached to the story.

Two very nice women had tried. They were from CNN, unit producers in town for a story on school shootings. Adam's was the only town in America with three in one year and one by a teacher. They had shut down half of the school system and suddenly you couldn’t walk outside without being harassed by a camera crew. That was three years before the interview though. That was the summer his father walked. The women were following up, trying to link the walking to an end in the violence. They were infinitely patient with him, listening to every guttural, muffled word. Before they could finish Adam had slashed their tires. For years he was asked, “why?" He couldn't say, but there was a vague understanding.

They were too accepting. When the answer to every question was “God,” and they would nod their heads and try to push for something more, it bothered him. The man said “God.” That’s why! That’s his answer, leave, the violence never stopped, it had nothing to do with anything, the violence is still right here in the heart of every violated member of this God-forsaken community. Here, I’ll show you.

There he was, box-cutter in hand, sitting on the hood of the little, rented, deflated compact. Everyone was calm; surprised, but no one yelled. Mr Tedford got in his truck and returned with four new tires that they could not afford. He changed each one himself. Adam sat in the kitchen with the women, not talking. After an hour of silence he told them that the violence would never cease. That kids still beat the crap out of each other and more often than not a man was thinking of murder in his town. He asked if his father was the cure for the shootings.

“No, he said that God just needed to know someone was listening.”

Adam couldn't bear that answer, “If he has this power from God why do we live in squalor? Filled with hate? If he has this power from God why doesn’t he move mountains?”

The older woman laughed. Adam was near tears, but so attached to his adolescent masculinity that he tried to cover it with rage. Adam popped the blade on the box cutter and tore a long slice through the wallpaper. There was a silent pause, then his tears came anyway, slipping out behind a wounded scream. The other woman spoke up.

“She asked him the same thing. Your dad told her, ‘Why? Where would you like the mountain to go?’”

Despite himself Adam laughed.

Wishing something that you loved so dearly would die is a rare extreme of humanity. It was the driving emotion of Adam's childhood.

Three years later Adam was 17 and his father died unceremoniously. It was a calming shock. Adam had been granted his wish and it was the end of his anger and childhood.

Adam eulogized Mr. Tedford. He finished with the story of the woman who asked his father to move mountains. No one laughed that time. It meant something much more.

At 20, Adam was attending college in Columbus, Ohio. On January 21st, at 1:10 PM  he heard the voice of God and spent the greater part of the next decade trying to drown it out.

When Adam woke up the night after killing Eddie Fisher he wandered into his garage and saw that the right front end of his car was crushed. He remembered hitting a dog, but the damage wasn't consistent with his memory. He began to worry. Over cocoa crisp rice and corona Adam watched the 12:00 local news. Everything was fine in the world. Suburbia droned on and Adam relaxed into the annoyance of the damage done to his car by the dog of some idiot who couldn't keep him tied up.

                                        - - - - -

Eddie Fisher was found breathing shallowly at 12:12pm by two women out power-walking near their neighborhood. By 12:26 most of the better local news stations had the story and passed notes, or altered teleprompters and went live with the story.

At 12:35 Adam called the police and turned himself in. It was a banner day for the local news.

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"No, I'm here, sorry. Alex was getting fussy. I had to put the phone down...I didn't want to interrupt you," Eric had regained himself and had the phone to his ear again. Alex was tired and lay slumped against his chest. Eric instinctively bounced lightly on the balls of his feet while he talked, lulling her to sleep. "Yes...yes I hear every word. I've heard every word a dozen times before and you need to hear me now – no – look, hold on, okay?" Eric walked to the Alex's room and laid her in the crib. She protested, and began to cry. No matter how often he heard it Alex's crying destroyed him, but he couldn't have that conversation in front of her. He closed the door and walked back to the kitchen. He went over the first few words a couple of times and picked up the phone, talking quickly, "Okay, this is it. I said I hear you every time? Well this time you need to hear me, got it? I'm not doing this anymore. When we failed it was my fault. I won't deny that. I'm sorry for it and I will be for the rest of my life but we will never be in love again and you can't punish me for that any longer. It's been two years. Two years of this...Shut up- no, shut up or I'll hang up now and change the number...yes, I mean that. You ran away from our daughter and our home. You had every right to, but we're getting along just fine without you now, and you need to put something together and get along without us, alright? You need to be okay or none of us can be. I did love you once, and I still want things to be good for you somehow, but I can't be the one to listen when I'm also the one you're yelling at." Eric took a breath, sat down and listened. Nothing came for a long time, then his expression changed from nervous energy to disappointment. He let he go on for a while before interrupting, "hey. Hey, hey. Listen. Someday I hope you can remember what I just said to you, I hope you actually heard it, because this is the last time we'll talk. I'm going to hang up the phone, and disconnect it. I'm going to get a new number, and if I remember correctly, you've never had the patience for mail. So this is it. I promise I'll never say a bad word about you to Alex. I'm sorry." Eric hung up the phone as she started to reply. He unclipped the line from the jack and walked to his bedroom where the phone he kept there was already ringing. He unplugged it and walked back to Alex.

Eric kept a small TV in her room because he often found himself in there all night long. Alex's pediatrician told him that he shouldn't be with her so constantly when she slept, but Eric couldn't stay away. He new it was bad for her though, so he bought the television. It was the best compromise he could manage. She would lie still looking at him or the TV until she fell asleep, and he wouldn't hold her and rock her, though he wanted to. Tonight he sat on the flood and leaned his head against the bars. There was a moment when he thought he'd cry. It was a horrible thing to cut a daughter off from her mother. He hated himself for it, but he had hated himself before and knew it would pass. He didn't want to think anymore that night. It was 11:00 and time for the late news. He turned the TV on.

"Channel 8 news. Number 1 in greater Columbus. We see it first, you see it first."