“My Father Was Not a Good Man”

My father was not a good man, and neither am I.

The sentence broke my soul and twisted my thoughts just traversing through my weary brain. Speaking it aloud would surely have demonstrated a shattering of my voice, the breaking of my teeth, and the unhinging of my jaw into a soundless cry. How sad a reality indeed for a boy’s heroic view of his father to twist into the horrific truth of a man who withheld no faith on God’s great earth.

Walking the streets of Salem as a child, it was easy to determine that something was quite off with father. All of the other parents grasped at their young child’s hand and displayed within their eyes a bond of love that can only be formed from a warm union of two pure souls. My father never held my hand, and on the rare occasion when our eyes would meet, my visage cracked at the film of gloom upon his.

My mother, my poor and sweet mother, was never to be given the affection deserving of a woman whose body had held the physical declaration of the intimacy of a married pair. He turned from her embrace, as though the touch of her silken skin was the drop of blessed water upon the Devil’s skin.

The congregation was not blind to the unholy downfall of my father; to miss such a deviation from grace would be to block the burning sun from the outline of the sky. There was once a time, according to my revered elders, who attended to me in the ways my father could not, that my father was regarded as an upstanding man.  Young Goodman Brown, as they called him, had cheerfully attended mass every Sunday, joined with his wife Faith, whom he had also devoted every essence of his passion in.

Young Goodman Brown was looked up to in the community. He was a model Puritan, and followed the town’s moral convictions to an impressive tee. However, much can occur from behind closed doors, where the eyes of his judging peers were nary to venture.

One day, my elders had proclaimed, father walked from the forest of the damned and into the heart of town, a cloud of despair seemingly delighting only his vessel, his hand dark with the handshake of the Devil. His face was never to hold joy again, and the corners of his frowning lips were never to be upturned. The deep burn of hate left a mark across his heart, visible to all who dared to glance upon him.

An anger known only by those who grew without love stewed within me in a dangerous tempest. I had spent my adolescence trying to make up for the darkness cast by my father’s uncaring stare. I married a young and sweet babe, my dearest Hope, trying to replace the intimacy I had spent my whole life searching for.

However, one cannot build a pedestal of tenderness upon a childhood of scorn, and soon my soul gave in to the depression that formed its very essence. The more I tried to feel the happiness my father had denied, the angrier I became that my brain could seemingly not accept it. My deposition grew turbulent with each passing day, and the passion that Hope radiated into me was nary to be reflected. Kisses between two frantic lovers turned to a mandated peck before bed, our warm embraces grew ever frigid, and the small cot at the foot of our bed remained dejectedly empty of a babe.

However, my Hope stayed with me, and was a force of silent strength amid my personal storm. Even still, while my wife attempted to weep undetected beside me in our marriage bed, my arms refused to envelop her and wipe the wet trails from her silken face. Even still, I had the nerve to consider myself righteous at heart.

Everyday, on my walk back to Hope, I glanced at the twisted forest, and the branches upon each broken tree seemed to wave to me. Beckoning. Yearning to embrace me the way it had held my father and taken away the last shred of his decency. Everyday I wondered if my father’s faith lied somewhere among the dried shrubs and bristled bush, waiting to be clutched amidst another Goodman.

Hope and I lived together in holy union for five journeys of the earth around the passionate sun. With each month spent barren of child, the public gaze of the town furrowed further upon our small shack of a house. The walls held unheard screams of regret and anguish, and the twinkle in my Hope’s eyes dulled against a harshly set reality.

I had once returned to our house to find Hope rummaging through the old cloth of her sisters’ children, a small glimmer of desire held among her now typically pain ridden expression. Rather than react with a similar aspiration, and clutch my wounded spouse with the love designated for our unborn child, I turned even colder. My own heart ripped itself to shreds, not with despair for our inability to breathe life into a soul, but instead from my inability to care.

I saw him in my own eyes that day, my father, that is. The passion I had yearned for all my life was being taken from my children before they could even come into existence. My moral compass pointed ever south towards damnation, though it pained me increasingly less as time continued to pass.

From that day, returning to our house from a hard day’s labor became increasingly excruciating, and my head often found itself locked in the direction of the fated forest. Shadows danced among the oaken logs, each day drawing me several steps closer to their recital.

The winter months were always the most trying, as the sky gave way to no glisten of light while I trodded solemnly towards the house that desperately vied to become a home. On particularly difficult days, when my steps froze in front of the covert woodland, I would instead venture to the home of my dearest advisor, placed carefully upon the edge of the trees.

This day happened to be within one of those harsh winter periods, and my feet beat along the familiar path to the elderly traveler, who had asked not to be regarded by name. I knocked upon his old door, and its worn surface seemed to have bore the brunt of many a callings. The door creaked open in an uneasy fashion, and the elderly man smiled at me in a manner that never seemed to match his eyes.

“Good Evening my son,” He purred to me in a smooth tone, “what bids you out to my home betwixt the woods?” His visage held a knowing expression, and answered his own question before my lips could even manage to part from their frosted envelopment. Through the silence, he tapped his staff rhythmically upon the floor, enrapturing my fast flowing thoughts with a simple motion.

“Get on with it then,” the learned man declared as I stared, as I am apt to do, at the sunken eyeballs of the serpent wrapped around his prized staff, “what about your father do you wish to digest today?”

His demanding voice broke my transfixion with the reptile, and my gape returned upon his face, which was riddled with amusement. “I wish,” I stated weakly, stopping to clear my wind-whipped throat, “I wish to shadow the very venture into the forest my father took in time’s past, and discover for myself the source of my long established sorrow”.

For the first time in all my years of acquaintance with the seasoned man, a look of sheer shock had broken through the witted mold of his face. He then stared deep into my soul, thrashing around my intentions and making my knees turn weak with indecisiveness. Almost violently, a grin stretched across his face, and his orbs penetrated mine with a force that caused me to physically flinch.

He stretched his hand out to me in a gesturing motion, flung open the door, and pointed his staff amidst the brewing animosity of the timberland. For a moment, gazing once again upon the carefully crafted staff, I swore I saw the eyes glow with the shade of an innocent man’s blood. I shivered, as if being shaken by an apparition itself, and my head turned quickly back into the direction of the town, still gently lit with the soft glow of many a lantern.

I slowly stood, walking apprehensively towards the figure whom I once invested all of my trust. Seeing my regret, the traveler set forth a hearty laugh, and then silently guided me down the broken path into the trees.

The deeper we went into the darkening woods, the more my mind filled with unease. The whispers of Indians danced among the shrieks of unknown beings that projected themselves within the cover of the brush. Something enraptured within me a moment of pure childlike fear, and I grasped at the cloak of the elder before images of my father appeared before me, and I reasserted myself in a more respectable manner.

“Here we are!” announced the traveler, pointing to a scorched area of timber surrounded by a thick blanket of re-grown vegetation. The entrance was small and covered in blood tipped thorns, shuttering violently in the increasing wind. In a blink, the traveler appeared on the other side of the growth, leaving me to make the pain filled crawl alone. Once entering the curtain, we were instantly shielded by darkness, and a cover of tightly woven leaves shielded the night’s stars.

Soon, a spark emerged, and a single flame appeared in the center of the clearing, illuminating the elder’s face. I gasped loudly, as on the left of the elder was my mother Faith, who wept into a ribbon of pink. On his right stood my father, whose hands were hidden from my view. Behind them was my entire village, all looking down on me with heathen-like appearances. 

They were whispering back and forth, and pointing at my empty hand, devoid of any child to cling to it. I instantly felt a blanket of shame cover me, and I refused to look up at the village again, wishing for anything to protect me from their scorn. Only the son of a dammed man would be denied the most public proof of his own manhood.

I anxiously looked up to my father’s eyes, which were purely black, and his blank expression cracked with the force of a sinister grin. His face then seemed to soften, and he reached out to me with a gesture of love so intense I was driven to my knees in tears. Softly, he whispered, “My son, please, let me try again. Let me give you all of the warmth you have always desired from me”.

Astonished, I looked back to the traveler to find him gone, his staff now being cradled by my father himself. In near disbelief, I glanced once again to my mother, whose mouth emitted no sounds barring her gentle sobs, and whose eyes refused to meet with mine. Surely, I thought, this cannot be real. However, the tenderness that radiated from my father to me was so compelling, it took all I had not to run into his embrace.

“Son,” my father repeated, “please return to your mother and I. Take this staff as a symbol of my regret, and I will use it to guide you safely from your world to ours.” Father gingerly, almost affectionately, took the staff and tossed it carefully over the flames, which had now made a barrier between us. It hit the ground and bounced 6 times, before slowly rolling over to my feet, seeming to radiate heat from its very core.

I stared into my father’s eyes, hypnotized, as the serpent came to life and slowly slid off the staff, preying closer to my body, yet stopping just before my boot. My face must have displayed my doubt, as my father prodded once more. “We love you, we want to be with you forever, pick up the staff and cross over to us,” the words seemed to slide off his tongue.

My hand slowly inched forward, seemingly with a mind of its own, as my thoughts wrapped around the words that were delivered in front of me. All my life I had wanted nothing but my father’s love, but now that it was here, I could only think about the pain it would cause to leave behind Hope with nothing but an ownerless cloth.

Even still, my hand inched ever forward, stopped only by a familiar cry breaking through the incessant chanting of the woods. I turned around cautiously, only to be disarmed with a familiar pair of twinkling eyes and a desperate grimace. Hope carefully locked her gaze upon mine and placed her warm palm upon my heart, filling me with the most intimate devotion I have ever experienced.

“My love, please, open your eyes. That man you see before you is not your father, can you not see! Rather, he is the Devil himself, taking the form of your dearest desire, and only to be given away by the darkness of his soul. I know you wish to know love, and you feel that crossing over to him is the only way, but I promise that if you let me lead you away, I will spend the rest of my days giving you all of the adoration my body can produce, “ Hope yearned, giving her whole monologue on one passionate breath, and then outstretched her hand, “I still believe we can make a good life for ourselves in this world, just take my hand and trust in me.”

Tears spilled over my eyes as I was once again rendered to my knees, glancing back between Hope and my father. Her eyes pleaded with mine, begging me to stay with her, promising a better life than the one we had had before. However, something about my father’s words kept bringing me back to the staff, and my fantasies of a better childhood flashed before me. Every fiber of my being urged my hand to continue forward to the staff. Besides, I wondered, if Hope and I could not build a happy life after all these years, who is to say we could now?

I had thought my mind was made up, but before extending my fist out to grasp around the foreboding staff, I was compelled to glance once more upon my father’s eyes. However, instead of experiencing the warm waves of embrace I had felt before, something was missing. My mind wandered back to the twinkle in Hope’s eyes, which made me feel as if anything in this twisted world was possible. His eyes were missing the innocent sincerity of uninhibited love.

I suddenly rose to my feet and stepped closer to the staff, each step acting as a slap to my wife’s lustrous face. My father broke into a wide smile, curling at the ends in a chilling manner. It was this evil expression that broke my trance, and I quickly lashed out, kicking the staff with my clothed foot into the rising fire. My father let out a bloodcurdling shriek as the staff turned to ash, and he seemingly disintegrated with it, blowing out into the depths of the forest.

My mother slowly disappeared backwards into the woods, her sobbing slowly drowning out among the sounds of the swirling wind. The fire quickly burned out, leaving behind a pile of ash, and placed carefully on top was the babe’s cloth, immaculately folded and devoid of any soot. I stepped carefully towards the small piece of fabric, and carefully scooped it into my arms, holding it the way a parent would clasp their child.

My lips curled upwards in an expression my face had long since forgotten, and I turned around swiftly to face Hope and share my joy. However, all that lay before me was a clearing of thorn-less roses, leading my way back out of the twisted woods. The sun rose swiftly around me in a magnificent cone of pink and gold, and as I walked strongly out of the accursed woods, the once ominous sounds grew completely silent to me. While the sun illuminated my body, I looked tenderly at the cloth and cradled it softly in my palms, and then for the first time in my life, I went home.

My father was not a good man, but maybe I can be.