I never asked for this but it was my father's final wish to take up his mantle. A promise I had to honor. In doing so, he euchred my brother, his first son, out of his birthright. He never did forgive him even when our father was on his deathbed. Nor me. We went our separate ways, living different lives as fate would have it. I should have been there with him, a liferaft he could have clung to but he lost himself in a hell of his own making. Lost in bitterness, in the darkness.
The last time I saw my brother, he rotted away in a jail cell. He was no longer the brother I knew. Decrepit in body, and withered in spirit, and only carried hatred in his heart. Despite it all, he made me promise to look after his son. In a world of broken promises and unfulfilled dreams, he didn't want to leave the world with no lingering regret. Or perhaps, when he passed from this world and stood before that man who is all men, that would ask him what good deeds he has done before He passed his final judgment. What's worse than an amputated spirit?
What destroys a man's soul is a bad life. And what follows is nothingness. A man's sufferance meaningless. How does one find meaning in a world where man is marked for death when he comes out of his mother's womb? Where the race of men is more predacious than any other creature? Perhaps nothing happens to anyone he was not fitted by nature to bear. But suffering incurs indignation within man and he angrily cries for justice. Who comes, God? Or the devil?
The Traveler sat on a bench beneath a willow tree overlooking the river as it ran its course to the sea. The sun also rose and sat east at the edge of the skyline. The Traveler reached into his jacket pocket for a cigarillo and he put it in between his teeth and lit it with a match. He puffed rings of smoke.
A priest came by and seated himself next to the Traveler. "It's a nasty habit, Michael."
"I assure you it will not kill me anytime soon, Father Jameson," he said as he puffed out more rings of vapor. "It's done. His army smashed and the leader's no longer among the living."
"You being alive is evidence as much. I'll inform them of your success, you did well." Father Jameson studied Michael and noted he was not making eye contact, looking straight ahead at the river. "What's wrong my son?"
Michael turned his head and looked into the Father's small, gray eyes. He stubbed the cigarillo on the bench and leaned forward and sighed. "That man, Hazael, was not like any man I fought before. He was not even a man," he said, "he was like the leviathan, a creature that can do about anything."
"How'd you survive, Michael?"
"I don't know. The last thing I remembered was a flash of lightning and we were separated from the blast. And I was the last man standing."
"Michael, my boy. You survive and the word is spreading what've you done for us. You have your strength and God's favor. But there's a corollary, the devil will come after you." The Priest laid a warm hand on Michael's shoulder. "On that day, will you be able to stand?
"I will, Father."
Jameson nods. "Indulge me for a bit? There's a story I want to tell you."
"Sure."
"Back when I was a missionary; a novitiate to the order. I traveled from place to place. They sent me to a village that was devastated by a hurricane. I was to provide aid and guidance. They were tough people despite being disadvantaged in ways of material wealth, they came together and rebuilt what was lost. But this father lost his son to the storm, he stayed inside the walls of a ruinous church and waited for the building to crush him." Jameson took a deep breath and laced his fingers together. "All of the villagers pleaded with him to come out but he refused them. Clinging to his silent grief. And I came along, he listened to what I had to say, and he broke his silence to ask me why Christ, the son of man, refused the three temptations of the devil in the wilderness." He leaned forward and wiped tears from his eyes. "And he went on to rant that suffering and loss will follow all the days of a man's life because of Christ's refusal. I didn't answer him... I didn't know how to answer him. Some things cannot be articulated by the language of man, it wouldn't be enough. Never is," he said, gazing at Michael. "I kissed him on his forehead and left him where he was. He never got what he wanted, and last thing I heard he died from a fever a few years later."
